We are just a group of retired spooks that discuss things that you’ll not find anywhere else. It makes us unique. Take a look around. Learn a thing or two.
This article is yet another in a series trying to document the peaking collapse of the United States in all of it’s myrid ways. And it is kind of tiring, don’t you know. I’d rather just do other things with my time, but we; everyone of us, are now in the mist of one of the most monumental shakeups in the world. It’s really very stunning. We are living history right now.
So how about getting yourself a nice beer, and grabbing some toasted Italian or French crusty bread, and placing some cheese, onions, tomatoes, and olive oil and sit down and read this article. The world seems to be going down into the gutter, but that’s an illusion.
It’s only the United States, and those foolish nations that chain themselves to it.
Yum!
War with China! Another Bright Idea from the Yankee Capital
Discussions of war with China over Taiwan often assume a short, regional war won by superior American technology, after which things go on approximately as before.
A few observations:
Overconfidence
First, overconfidence is an occupational disease of militaries and militarists. Wars very often fail to proceed according to the expectations of the aggressors and not infrequently end in catastrophe.
The American Civil War was expected to be over in an afternoon at First Manassas; wrong by four years and 630,000 dead, equivalent to over six million today.
When Napoleon invaded Russia, he did not foresee Russian troops marching in Paris, which is what happened.
When Germany invaded France in 1914, it expected a short, victorious war of movement, and got four years of a losing attrition war.
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, GIs sleeping with their daughters in Tokyo was not among their war aims, but it is what happened.
When the French went back into Vietnam after WW II, being catastrophically defeated by les jaunes at Dien Bien Phu was not a strategic objective.
When America invaded Vietnam, Washington did not expect a panicked flight from atop the Embassy.
When Hitler invaded Russia, GIs in Berlin were not in his plans.
When Russia invaded Afghanistan, it did not expect the same outcome that the Americans should have expected, but didn’t, when they did exactly the same thing.
The list could be extended. Caution often is a wiser plan than martial enthusiasm.
Overestimation of ability
Second, America starts its wars by [1] overestimating its own capacities, [2] underestimating the enemy, and [3] misunderstanding the nature of the war it is getting into.
There is probably a manual on this.
Usually the US has no end game and no “what if” plan in case the unforeseen occurs. These traits are clear in America’s wars since Korea.
The reason for this curious behavior is that war is only tangentially a rational endeavor, being chiefly a limbic, instinctually driven habit probably of genetic provenance.
War is just what men do, tribe against tribe, country against country, empire against empire, world without end. War is a major, perhaps the major, focus of human endeavor.
A glance at history reveals it to be chiefly a tapestry of war. The literature of civilizations reflects this: The Gilgamesh Epic, the Iliad, the Aeneid, El Cid, Orlando Furioso, Lord of the Rings.
Taiwan
Does America have a clear reason for defending Taiwan? It is not of vital importance to America, and arguably not even of minor importance.
The fact is, that very few Americans know quite where it is, and few can distinguish it from Thailand.
If it became part of China almost no one would notice.
Before getting into an unpredictable war with a massively populous nuclear power of formidable economic and military resources on the other side of the world, it might be wise to answer the question, “Why? What do we gain? How do we get out of said war?”
Regarding war in Chinese waters:
The US fleet has not been in combat since 1945, over seventy-five years ago.
American pilots have not flown against a competent enemy since 1973, almost half a century ago.
People’s Liberation Army Navy J-15 “Flying Shark” fighters parked about the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning
Enormous changes in technology and armament have occurred in the intervening years.
Nobody really knows what a battle of naval forces against modern antiship missiles would look like. Those who can guess are not sanguine.
Most warships today lack armor.
Anyone looking at what a couple of French Exocet missiles did to the USS Stark in 1987 would not bet on equally unarmored Ticos or Arleigh Burkes.
An aircraft carrier is a large bladder of aviation fuel wrapped around high explosives.
Look at the accidental launch in 1967 of one Zuni five-inch ground-attack missile aboard the USS Forrestal, igniting raging fires, cooking off bombs, killing 134 sailors and putting the ship in the repair yard for many months.
Militaries grow slack in extended periods of peace.
Training decreases to save money. War stocks of tank treads are cannibalized for training and aren’t there when war comes; the company that made them has gone out of business. Supplies of critical parts dwindle as budgets go to procurement of future hardware.
After all, nobody really expects war. Rapid mobilization, it turns out, is impossible.
Conscription?
If the war was not won as quickly and decisively as hoped, as it very likely would not be, would an American public already under severe economic stress support the heavy cost of a war having no obvious end point or relevance to their lives? Conscription?
Beltway thinking
Within the Washington Beltway many seem to think that China is Cambodia with more people.
Some in Washington harbor a residual belief that America is militarily supreme, that its mere entrance into war seals the outcome.
Think again, carefully.
Rand has wargamed regional war in the Strait and South China Sea and concluded that America has a very good chance of losing.
The Chinese are smart, and excellent engineers.
Chinese students dominate America’s best technical universities and the elite high schools. CalTech and MIT, for example.
Look at the Chinese space program, the upcoming 360 mph maglev trains using high-temperature superconductivity.
The Chinese are not little-leaguers. They have put many resources into antiship missiles specifically designed for US carriers. These, note, greatly outrange carrier aviation.
Iraq was predicted to be a “cakewalk.” China won’t be.
Japan
Allies? In naval circles there is much talk about the First Island Chain and an assumption that Japan will join a war against China to protect Taiwan, or at least let its bases be used by American forces.
Are we sure?
Japan is well within missile and air range of China.
Japan is within missile and air range of China.
All of its petroleum arrives by sea, and China has pretty decent submarines. Japan’s trade mostly moves by sea.
China is a crucial trading partner whose elimination in a war would devastate the Japanese economy.
Japan is close to China.
America is not.
Tokyo might worry that America would grow weary of the war and go home, as it usually does, and leave Japan, all alone, in a shooting war with China.
How would that end?
What stake does Japan have in the independence of Taiwan?
Today it trades with both Taiwan and China. If China absorbed the island, Japan would continue trading with both. Only the letterhead would change. Are we quite, quite sure Tokyo would want any part of this?
South Korea
South Korea?
Its cities and entire economy are within missile range of China. Does it really want to get into a shooting war with its huge neighbor, which has a land border with the peninsula, to maintain American hegemony in the Pacific?
Having gotten into a war, how would it get out?
The Koreans may have thought of this.
Wars as imagined inside the Beltway often seem to assume that the enemy will just lie there and be bombed without doing anything untoward or unexpected.
Are we sure?
The United States has 28,000 troops and their families within range of Chinese weaponry, the killing of whom would force Washington into desperate measures.
Could China encourage North Korea to attack southward, creating a two-front war far beyond Washington’s ability to handle? Or Kim to think he saw a chance and attack on his own initiative?
Might China annex Myanmar? Perhaps this is farfetched. Perhaps it isn’t. Remember that nobody expected China’s entry into the Korean war.
Taiwan
One might suspect that Taipei, seeing overwhelming forces arrayed against it across the Strait, will one day cut the best deal it can with Beijing rather than be devastated first and then have to accept whatever conditions Beijing chose to impose.
It could get a sweetheart deal as Beijing would much prefer this to invading with all of its risks.
Here is a factor I am not competent to judge, but that might be worth judging: The Chinese, as I knew them long ago when I lived in Taiwan, are (very) racially aware and nationalistic.
The Taiwanese are Chinese.
You can bet they know of the Legations, the Opium Wars, the Boxers, the burning of the Summer Palace, the Korean War.
As I write, the most popular movie on the mainland is about a Chinese victory over Americans in the Korean War.
What might a Chinese attack on Taiwan look like?
The Chinese general staff mysteriously does not confide in me, but a good guess is easy. The Chinese often do beach-assault exercises on their side of the strait, obviously practice for the genuine assault.
One of these turns suddenly into the real thing. Ballistic missiles crater Taiwan’s military runways, missiles in large numbers hit air defenses.
Troop ships head for Taiwan, getting there in eight hours at fifteen knots, helicopters and paratroops in less.
China’s large and reasonably good air force bombs and bombs and bombs.
After twenty-four hours, the US is still trying to decide what is happening, talking to the JCS, asking the President what to do.
Victory
Nathan Bedford Forrest, the talented Confederate general, is said to have said that the secret of victory is to “git thar fustest with the mostest.”
In the event of a surprise attack, how long would it take—in the real world, not in PowerPoint slides—for America to get there with how much of what?
If the Chinese got substantial forces ashore, it would be the end of the story.
Keeping troops out of an island is one thing, getting them out quite another. Not even John Bolton—perhaps not even John Bolton—can imagine that America could win a land war with China in Asia.
Selling the American public on a large war over things in which it has no interest would be difficult.
Under these circumstances, the chances are nonnegligible that the US would make loud noises, huff and puff, save face as best it could, and do nothing.
What would REALLY happen?
But let us assume that Washington fought and lost the regional war, Taiwan perhaps surrendering after the U.S. lost a dozen ships and a carrier was disabled.
What would Washington do after such a humiliation?
Never underestimate the influence of vanity on world affairs.
The hawks in DC have elevated titles and, sometimes, considerable ability, but they also have the same hormones and egos as patrons in Joe’s Bar in Chicago. A Chinese victory in the style of Tsushima Strait would end the world’s view of America as an invincible hegemon.
The fernbar Napoleons might well decide to up the ante and turn a regional into a world war.
This it would win.
“Win.”
Perhaps by blocking the Strait of Malacca and threatening the Three Gorges Dam. The expectation in the Pentagon would likely be that Beijing would see the futility of resistance and surrender.
But if it did not?
The REAL facts
America’s trade with China in goods in 2020 was $660 billion, $120 billion of that being exports, making it America’s largest trading partner…
Cutting this off would wreck the American economy.
This is far more than a matter of iPhones and cheap plastic buckets for Walmart. Though most may not know it, America is an economic dependency of China.
The US gets from China countless things it cannot make but cannot do without.
For example, cars require computers to control their ignition and transmissions. Where do we think these are made?
Companies like Boeing sound American but many vital assemblies come from China.
High-end semiconductors, crucial to today’s economies, come predominantly from East Asian companies, notably Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Samsung, both of which would be hostage to Chinese attack.
The great majority of rare earths, critical to the manufacture of chips, come from China.
Similar considerations exist for industry after industry.
While America has the technology to make most of the things it gets from China, it does not have the manufacturing capacity, and would need years to develop it.
Has anyone in Washington checked industry by industry to see what the effects of the end of imports would actually be?
Further, China is the largest trading partner of most of the world, Germany and the European Union for example, and close with most of the rest.
If an American war took China out of the global supply chain, [1] the resulting depression would make 1929 look like the height of prosperity, [2] turn the entire earth against the US, and likely [3] lead to the lynching of everyone in Washington.
Never mentioned is that America is trying, with considerable success, to block China’s economic progress by preventing its acquisition of advanced semiconductors.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest and most advanced manufacturer of chips, is in Taiwan. Reunification of Taiwan with China would solve this critical problem. Beijing has probably thought of this.
Considering the costs, risks, and benefits if any of such a war, the question may be, “How bright an idea is this?”
China’s missiles could dust the US military in minutes — here’s what would happen if they tried
China’s massive missile forces could savage US air and naval forces in the Pacific, lighting up ports and airfields, and blowing up F-35s, F-22s, and possibly aircraft carriers before they could respond.
War-gaming experts point to this as a persistent problem with US forces in the Pacific, but it’s far from a clear-cut win for China.
The US has a number of ways it can predict, prevent, or blunt a missile attack, and once the US military and its allies kick into gear, China will face a mighty wrath.
Experts at the cutting edge of simulated warfare have spoken: China would handily defeat the US military in the Pacific with quick bursts of missile fired at air bases.
The exact phrasing was that the US was getting “its ass handed to it” in those simulations, Breaking Defense reported the RAND analyst David Ochmanek as saying earlier in March.
“In every case I know of,” Robert Work, a former deputy secretary of defence, said, “the F-35 rules the sky when it’s in the sky, but it gets killed on the ground in large numbers.”
Against China, which has emerged as the US’s most formidable rival, this problem becomes more acute. China’s vast, mountainous territory gives it millions of square kilometres in which to hide its extensive fleet of mobile long-, medium-, and short-range missiles.
In the opening minutes of a battle against the US, Beijing could unleash a barrage of missiles that would nail US forces in Guam, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and possibly Australia. With China’s growing anti-ship capability, even US aircraft carriers in the region would likely come under intense fire.
For the US, this would be the feared attack in which F-35s and F-22s, fifth-generation aircraft and envy of the world, are blown apart in their hangars, runways are cratered, and ships are sunk in ports.
The remaining US forces in this case would be insufficient to back down China’s air and sea forces, which could then easily scoop up a prize such as Taiwan.
Additionally, the US can’t counter many of China’s most relevant missile systems because of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty it signed with Russia, which prohibits missiles with ranges between 500 kilometres and 5,470 kilometres – the type it would need to hold Chinese targets at equal risk. (The US is withdrawing from that treaty.)
So given China’s clear advantage in missile forces and the great incentive to knock out the best military with a sucker punch, why doesn’t it try?
Politics
China could light up much of the Pacific with a blistering salvo of missiles and do great harm to US ships and planes, but they likely won’t because it would start World War III.
China wouldn’t just be attacking the US. It would be attacking Japan and South Korea at a minimum. Whatever advantage China gained by kicking off a fight this way would have to balance against a combined response from the US and its allies.
The US is aware of the sucker-punch problem. In the event that tensions rise enough that a strike is likely, the US would simply spread its forces out among its bases and harden important structures, such as hangars, so they could absorb more punishment from missiles.
Potential targets China needed to strike would multiply, and the deployment of electronic and physical decoys would further complicate things for Beijing. For US ships at sea, the use of electronic decoys and onboard missile defenses would demand China throw tremendous numbers of missiles at the platforms, increasing the cost of such a strike.
Key US military bases will also have ballistic-missile defences, which could blunt the attack somewhat.
The US also monitors the skies for ballistic missiles, which would give it some warning time. Alert units could scramble their aircraft and be bearing down on China’s airspace just after the first missiles hit.
Justin Bronk, a military-aviation expert at the Royal United Service Institute, pointed out at the institute’s Combat Air Survivability conference that when the US hit Syria’s Al Shayrat air base with 58 cruise missiles, planes were taking off from the base again within 24 hours.
Payback is a … consideration
Missiles brigades that just fired and revealed their positions would be sitting ducks for retaliation by the US or its allies.
Japan, which will soon have 100 F-35s, some of which will be tied into US Navy targeting networks, would jump into the fight swiftly.
China would have to mobilize a tremendous number of aircraft and naval assets to address that retaliatory strike. That mobilization, in addition to the preparations for the initial strike, may tip Beijing’s hand, telegraphing the sucker punch and blunting its damage on US forces.
While China’s missile forces pose a huge threat to the US, one punch isn’t enough to knock out the world’s best military, but it is enough to wake it up.
…
Now consider this…
It is not ONLY China. It’s fighting China + Russia together.
Together.
If all the studies point to massive defeats against China alone, imagine the horror when fighting a paired Russia and China together.
It is a suicide move.
Consider this.
Losing in a war is never a pleasant experience. I am sure that many generals throughout history can attest to this fact.
Consider what happened to the entire Nazi German Sixth Army when it was surrounded and trapped inside Stalingrad…
How German Field Marshal Paulus was taken prisoner
Gaunt, pale and emaciated, the commander of the Wehrmacht’s 6th Army looked like a hunted animal to the Soviet military commanders.
.
On the night of January 31, 1943, units of the 64th Army’s 38th Motorized Rifle Brigade broke through to the department store building in the center of Stalingrad, sealing it off from all sides. According to captured Germans, it was there that the headquarters of Friedrich Paulus’s 6th Army was stationed. The Soviet ‘Operation Koltso’ (Ring) to defeat the enemy grouping encircled in the city was approaching its finale…
The “beast’s lair”
After the Soviet troops opened intensive fire from machine guns and mortars on the building at about six o’clock in the morning, the shooting from the German side stopped. White flags appeared from the ground and second floors. The enemy wanted to start negotiations.
On the order of the brigade commander, Colonel Ivan Burmakov, a group of negotiators led by Senior Lieutenant Fyodor Ilchenko headed for the department store building. A German officer who met the Soviet soldiers told them through an interpreter: “Our top commander wants to talk to your top commander.” To that, Ilchenko retorted: “Well, our top commander has many other things to attend to. He is not here. You’ll have to talk to me.”.
Ignoring the German officer’s halfhearted request to hand over their weapons, the Soviet negotiators started going down to the basement where Friedrich Paulus had his HQ. “The basement was literally packed with soldiers – there were hundreds of them here. Worse than a tram! They were all unwashed and hungry and they smelt to high heaven! They all looked desperately frightened. They had huddled here to hide from the mortar fire,” recalled the senior lieutenant. Hearing the sound of gunfire, Ilchenko made a grab for his holster, but it only turned out to be suicides.
The negotiators were met by the commander of the Wehrmacht’s 71st Infantry Division, Maj-Gen Friedrich Roske, and the 6th Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Arthur Schmidt. They led the Soviet soldiers to Paulus’s room. “The Field Marshal was lying on an iron bed without a uniform, in just his shirt,” recalled Ilchenko. “A candle-end was burning on the table, illuminating an accordion lying on the couch. Paulus didn’t greet us but he sat up. He had the appearance of a sick and physically exhausted man and his face was twitching in a nervous tic.”
Negotiations
An ordinary lieutenant could not accept the capitulation of the German commander and, gradually, representatives of the senior and top-level Red Army command started arriving at the department store. Several hours later, accompanied by several colonels and lieutenant-colonels, Maj-Gen Ivan Laskin, chief of staff of the 64th Army, came down to the basement. In an attempt to distance himself in every possible way from the capitulation, Paulus delegated the right to negotiate to Roske and Schmidt.
While the Field Marshal was “tidying himself up” in the room next door, the Soviet negotiators presented his generals with an ultimatum: The encircled grouping must immediately stop any resistance, lay down its weapons and surrender to the Soviet troops in an orderly manner.
Tired of waiting for Friedrich Paulus himself to finally appear, the Soviet commanders went into his room. The German commander, according to Laskin’s recollections, greeted the members of the delegation with a sentence in broken Russian: “Field Marshal of the German Army Paulus renders himself prisoner to the Red Army.” He apologized that, since his new rank had only been conferred on him on January 30, his new uniform wasn’t ready and he was compelled to appear in his colonel-general’s uniform. “And anyway, my new uniform will hardly be of any use to me now,” the commander added with a wry smile.
At that point in time, the 6th Army in Stalingrad was cut into two groupings isolated from each other. As a result of the talks, the southern pocket of German troops, commanded by General Roske, was to capitulate. At the same time, Paulus declined to order the northern pocket to surrender on the grounds that, since January 30, its commander, Col-Gen Karl Strecker, was directly accountable to Hitler.
Inglorious end
Street fighting was still under way in the center of Stalingrad when German officers, accompanied by Soviet commanding officers, set off in vehicles to order their units to cease firing.
After all the formalities had been settled and the Field Marshal had received guarantees of his personal safety, he was led out of the basement, along with his staff officers. The area around the department store had by then come under the full control of Soviet infantry and Wehrmacht soldiers were clearing sectors that had been mined.
“Soviet and German soldiers who just a few hours earlier had been firing on each other stood calmly next to one another in the courtyard holding their guns in their hands or slung on their shoulder. But how shockingly different their external appearance was!” recalled Wilhelm Adam, adjutant to the 6th Army commander. “The German soldiers – ragged, in thin greatcoats over threadbare uniforms, as thin as skeletons – presented emaciated figures exhausted half to death, with sunken, unshaved features. The Red Army soldiers were well nourished, full of vigor and dressed in fine winter uniforms… I was deeply moved by something else. Our soldiers were not beaten, let alone shot. Amidst the ruins of their city which the Germans had destroyed, Soviet soldiers would pull a piece of bread or cigarettes or tobacco out of their pocket and offer them to the weary, half-starved German soldiers.”
Sergeant Pyotr Alkhutov was present when the German commander was taken prisoner: “Paulus was haggard and clearly ill. He attempted to conduct himself in a suitably dignified manner, but in his condition it was difficult for him to manage. On that frosty morning in Stalingrad, it dawned on all the men of the Red Army and the overwhelming majority of the German soldiers that this was the beginning of the end for them and the start of our Victory.”
A car to the neighboring village of Beketovka, where the 64th Army HQ was stationed, awaited the Field Marshal. There, he would be interrogated by the Army commander Lt-Gen Mikhail Shumilov and the Don Front commander Lt-Gen Konstantin Rokossovsky. Ahead for Friedrich Paulus lay Soviet camps, work in the anti-fascist National Committee for a Free Germany and life in the GDR for the short time left to him…
On its way to the HQ, the car caught up with columns of German prisoners dragging themselves along the road. Unwashed, with unkempt beards, they wore comical-looking makeshift snow boots and were wrapped in towels and women’s headscarves.
Laskin gave the driver a sign to slow down to allow the German commander to observe them closely and thoroughly. “It’s appalling…” pronounced Paulus somberly. “A shameful capitulation, the terrible tragedy of the soldiers. And, until now, the 6th Army was regarded as the best field army in the Wehrmacht…”
The rest of the story…
By February 1943, Russian troops had retaken Stalingrad and captured nearly 100,000 German soldiers, though pockets of resistance continued to fight in the city until early March.
Most of the captured soldiers died in Russian prison camps, either as a result of disease or starvation.
The loss at Stalingrad was the first failure of the war to be publicly acknowledged by Hitler. It put Hitler and the Axis powers on the defensive, and boosted Russian confidence as it continued to do battle on the Eastern Front in World War II.
In the end, many historians believe the Battle at Stalingrad marked a major turning point in the conflict. It was the beginning of the march toward victory for the Allied forces of Russia, Britain, France and the United States.
MM Comments
There is no doubt that the people inside of Washington DC are desirous of a war with China, and Russia. That is so obvious as to defy any statements to the contrary.
The big question is why?
When presented with this question, we are given the following excuses…
Insanity of the leadership.
The Leadership is in a dangerous “echo chamber”.
There is no leadership and the nation is on “autopilot” following instructions laid down thirty years ago.
Alien creatures took over the minds of the Leadership.
The Leadership are “Old Empire” entities.
The Leadership would rather die than take second place in the global stage.
A need to unify a fractured United States though war.
I don’t know the real answers.
I have my thoughts and opinions on this and I have discussed these previously.
What I am going to say here is that when anyone talks about a war, any war, but most especially one involving both Chian and Russia, you MUST also talk about what happens when you lose the war.
You MUST discuss what happens afterwards. Because I can tell you, it is impossible for the United States to win against any war against a unified Asia. Every single study, think tank, war game and analysis has verified this.
So ponder that thought.
Because the stage is set.
The American Leadership wants a war against Asia and it will lose. So what will happen afterwards?
Think about it.
What happens NEXT…
What ever remains of the United States will be quite different. It will be a complete blank sheet of paper and the victors will rewrite what will happen.
Completely.
It’s going to be very distasteful inside of a collapsed, ruined, and conquered United States. It will be very harsh.
The best thing that you can do is to be part of a local community and provide benefit to that community in every way possible. You shouldn’t wait until that day and that need occurs, but rather start now by laying a strong foundation in relationships with those around you.
And do your affirmations, and all the rest.
Be the Rufus.
Now let’s talk about something near and dear to my heart…
Goulash.
Goulash, is a soup or stew of meat and vegetables seasoned with paprika and other spices. Originating in Hungary, goulash is a common meal predominantly eaten in Central Europe but also in other parts of Europe. It is one of the national dishes of Hungary and a symbol of the country.
My mother used to make it a couple of times a month, but I haven’t had it in years. None of my wives knew how to make it. You cannot get it in restrurants, and there’s no frozen versions of it anywhere in the supermarkets.
I am thus forced to day dream about it here.
Goulash.
Goulash, is a soup or stew of meat and vegetables seasoned with paprika and other spices.
It shouldn’t be too difficult to make, don’t you think?
Goulash, is a soup or stew of meat and vegetables seasoned with paprika and other spices.
There are different flavors and styles of this dish. All of them look delicious.
Goulash, is a soup or stew of meat and vegetables seasoned with paprika and other spices.
Some have a nice hearty soup broth, with others are simply flavored meats like this…
Goulash, is a soup or stew of meat and vegetables seasoned with paprika and other spices.
Well, no matter how you look at it, it certainly looks great, and would go well with some crusty bread, or rice. Oh, yeah, a nice salad or fruit plate, and don’t foget pairing it with a nice wine. Yum!
Goulash, is a soup or stew of meat and vegetables seasoned with paprika and other spices.
Do you know what would be nice?
Go invite some friends over. Tell them that you are experimenting with Hungarian Goulash and would like them tom come over, eat a nice meal with wine, listen to some tunes, and play some cards. Wouldn’t that be lovely?
I really think that it would.
Goulash with a spoonful of sour crème on top.
Imagine the meal.
A nice loaf of bread. Some wine, maybe a chardonnay or a light red. Some kind of vegitable side. Maybe snow peas with garlic and spring onions. Or some slaw. The aroma fills the air.
Authentic goulash.
Just imagine it.
Big chunks of beef, potatoes, parsnips and carrots in a paprika riddled broth. Hot and steaming with crusty pieces of bread for dipping.
Really good paprika is the key to an authentic Hungarian Goulash ,or Gulyas. It is to be found everywhere in Budapest and it would be a good idea to try the different versions, both sweet and hot. There are good paprikas from Hungary found in most large supermarkets in the USA as well as online sources.
The goulash experience inside of Hungary…
Goulash.
Here’s a recepie…
And keep in mind and remember, the idea is a was to share your life with others in colorful, fun, tasty and interesting ways. I just cannot help but think that Hungarian Goulash might be a very good vehicle to achieve this.
Have fun together.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Well, we all have been dealing with a host of disturbing Geo-Political actions originating out of the USA for decades. And over the last few years they have become more brazen, more outrageous and more daring. It’s been building up to a crescendo.
This build-up has triggered actions from the rest of the world, and the most notable being Russia, and China.
China and Russia has laid down “Red Lines”.
The United States ignored them.
The United States Has no idea…
Alex Krainer:
Western powers seem to have largely lost institutional brakes on waging war.
Someone cries “human rights,” and we seem prepared to obliterate entire nations with hardly any debate, discussion, or any long-term plan.
The consent for war, or “kinetic action”, is simply contrived by myriad think-tanks, often directly or indirectly funded by the military-industrial complex.
With unhindered access to the media, these organizations produce rhetoric that rationalizes hostility, demonization of targeted adversaries and justifications for war.
Today, as tensions with Russia have escalated to a boiling point, some of them draw historical parallels between today’s Russia and Nazi Germany. Among others, Victoria Nuland and Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger have recently invoked Britain’s 1938 policy of appeasement that caused the destruction of Czechoslovakia and empowered Hitler.
The insinuation is that today, Ukraine is Czechoslovakia, Donbas is Sudetenland and that Vladimir Putin is Hitler.
If the parallels were valid, they would imply that we should pay almost any price to avoid repeating Neville Chamberlain’s errors of judgment that plunged Europe into the tragedy of World War II.
Of course, the parallels are entirely false, but unfortunately, this is not widely understood.
Things are serious now…
Then Russia forced the United States to comply and answer their concerns in [1] writing and [2] in public about placement of nuclear weapons on the Russian border.
“The content of the US response on security guarantees allows you to count on a serious conversation, but on secondary topics."
"There is no answer to the most important question – about the non-expansion of NATO to the east.”“Our President will now decide on the next steps.”
-Lavrov
You know, over the last two months, the expression on the faces of Lavrov and Putin remind me of a scene from “The Sopranos”.
It’s very serious.
Pictures
For some perspective…
And his counterpart in the Ukraine that NATO and the USA embrace…
And now, let’s look at the military…
And here is what you have in the Ukraine…
And the NATO troops that will take on Russia…
The course of action
A “white tent” was set up and ignored.
Now the “red tents” are up.
From now on in, things are going to get very ugly. It is no wonder that all of Asia is very somber and serious right now.
They remember history. They know what needs to occur…
I won’t let what happened to my father happen to me.
The Sopranos
As I said, the expressions on the faces of Putin, Lavrov, and the generals are very serious. The color is drained out of their faces, and they seem gripped with steeling determination and dangerous determination. It well reminds me of a scene from the television show “The Sopranos”.
The Sopranos crew.
In it, the (mob boss) Tony had to kill a beloved cousin, and a long time childhood friend to prevent a massive gang war. He didn’t want to do it at all, but he knew that if he didn’t, many people would die.
This was the death of Tony Blundetto (Buscemi).
In that case, Blundetto killed Joey “Peeps” from the Leotardo crew (a different mob).
This was really a very, very bad thing to do and very serious.
Since Phil Leotardo (Frank Vincent) was intent on making Blundetto’s death the most painful event in recorded history, Tony did him a favor by making it quick.
In the blink of an eye — and the blast of a shotgun — Tony spared his cousin the torture he would have received in Leotardo’s hands.
So reluctantly, but determined, he got his shotgun and killed his childhood friend. Then he called the other mob boss where to find the body.
He hastened the death of his cousin, and prevented his long-drawn-out torture. He also prevented a long ongoing mob war.
I am absolutely convinced that what ever “leadership” is directing things behind the scenes in the United States and in Europe, they have no fucking idea what they are dealing with.
Maybe it’s the notorious American “echo chambers” where they believe their own propaganda.
Or maybe it’s all the power, wealth and drugs that got into their heads.
Or, as late John Kenneth Galbraith noted,
“People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage”.
Whatever the root cause…
…It doesn’t matter. It’s now too late. The “white tents” were rejected. And the “red tents” are out.
Well…
This isn’t what anyone thinks it is, and judging from the American “news”, all the collective West are setting themselves up for some horrible things. Maybe America will endure. Maybe America will survive. Maybe America will emerge unscathed as the rest of the world burns. Maybe Jesus will come forth and protect all Americans because of their inherent worthiness…
But I will tell you this…
When cold-blooded killers believe that they need to hurt you, and hurt you bad, you need to RUN…
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
I hope that I am not alone in being sick and tired of this pathetic, tiresome attempt to throw up a smokescreen and hide the inevitable reality of what is about to unfold.
In case it isn’t completely clear to you yet, I would like to spell it all out.
I am normally more cautious when making specific predictions, but in this case our immediate future has been carefully plotted out for us by Russia and China, with the US and its assorted puppets reduced to the status of non-playable characters in a video game who can only do one thing: hide behind a dense smokescreen of risible lies.
-A Short-Term Geopolitical Forecast
Well, we all have been dealing with a host of disturbing Geo-Political actions originating out of the USA for decades. And over the last few years they have become more brazen, more outrageous and more daring. It’s been building up to a crescendo.
This build-up has triggered actions from the rest of the world, and the most notable being Russia, and China.
During the last year, both Russia and China have established FIRM “red lines” that are absolute and that WILL result in very negative consequences for the United States if they are not treated seriously.
And they have not been taken seriously.
Well, the great point of inflection has been reached. The pivot point of Geo-political alignments and strengths is tripping RIGHT NOW.
Some “tell-tails”…
Black Operations 101;
Secrets are actually secret. Anything “leaked” in the news is a distraction and not an actual secret. Anything and everything you read in the American and Western Bloc “news” are intentional distractions. Real significant events are never reported on, and if so, it is long, long after the fact.
Thus, the purpose of the “news” media is a barometer. It’s a measure of what distractions are being put in place. The bigger; the more enormous the hyped up distraction, the more significant the actual events are.
And there is one major, significant, distraction going on right now. It’s the “so-called” Russian build-up to invade the Ukraine.
In fact, it is so frenzied and hysterical that it is like a flashing neon red light and howling siren to all of us who have ever worked for the US Government. It tells us that “something big is up”, and to look for other things. These other things that are not being reported.
The lack of news coverage on these other things is an indicator of what is really going on.
Distractions are not what are happening. Their purpose is to take your focus away from the real events.
The largest American Navy build up in the history of America, and indeed the history of the earth. That’s what.
For some (only) God knows reason, the United States has decided to deploy most all of its massive naval forces off the Chinese coast. This includes five separate flotillas. Each one consisting of multiple aircraft and VTOL carriers, submarines and cruisers, destroyers and support vessels.
Along with that are elements of MAC (the Air Force Military Airlift Command) ferrying troops and munitions and arms to the Pacific. To include Korea, Japan, and other bases throughout the Pacific.
This is comparable to the build up for the Normandy Invasion of “D Day”.
In short, the largest concentration of United States Naval and Marine forces are now concentrated off the coast of China. And it is not being made public.
What’s going on?
What’s going on?
Within a few weeks, maybe days, Russian President Putin and Chinese President Xi Peng will attend the Winter Olympics. During the event, they will formalize and make a number of significant and strategic Geo-Political policy announcements to the world.
No one knows what they will be.
What we do know is that they will be significant responses to a series of the United States malevolent actions, ignorance, and responses to its failure to take the “red lines” of both China, and Russia seriously.
Huh? You might ask.
What are the “Red Lines”?
Russia told the United States to [1] stop CIA backed “color revolutions” in and around the borders of its nation. (Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Kazakhstan, etc.) And, [2] to stop the placement of nuclear-capable missiles and munitions on its borders.
“The content of the US response on security guarantees allows you to count on a serious conversation, but on secondary topics."
"There is no answer to the most important question – about the non-expansion of NATO to the east.”“Our President will now decide on the next steps.”
-Lavrov
China told the United States to also [1] stop CIA backed “color revolutions” in and around the borders of its nation. [2] To stop the placement of nuclear-capable missiles and munitions on its borders, and in its neighbors. It also [3] told the United States to STAY OUT of Chinese domestic affairs. Which means Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, and the Uighurs. All of which are internal domestic matters.
China never received any answers.
Both China and Russia told the United States to stop attacking the BRI trade routes in all the many flavors of hybrid-war that it has been engaging in.
So the USA ignored the “red lines”
The United States simply continued its actions.
Failure to show serious actions to avoid conflict, shows little respect for that national sovereignty of both nations. And is strongly suggestive that the United States plans to engage in a kinetic war with Asia.
Both nations are tired of the games, and “bullshit”.
They put up their “white tents”, and offered branches of peace, and the United States ignored them.
So what is next, will be announced during the Winter Olympics.
Possible Consequences…
I can devote all sorts of speculations on what can occur. The top speculations are…
Formal Military Treaty between China and Russia. Not really needed, the relationship is far closer than any treaty, and both militaries train with each other. They share technology together, and have military liaisons in all of their military headquarters. It seems silly that this relationship would be formalized on a scrap of parchment. This would crush the hopes and dreams of the American neocon block.
Formal announcement of extraction from SWIFT. China and Russia might tell the rest of the world that if they want to buy goods made in China, and materials out of Russia, that they cannot use the US Dollar. This would send the US economy in a tail-spin.
Sanctions against America. This is taking a “page out of the United States playbook“, and giving the USA a “dose of its own medicine“. This would stop all trade between the USA and Asia, and any nation that wants Chinese products from Chinese factories will be punished and sanctioned if they trade with the USA. This would completely collapse the USA society.
Nationalization of American businesses and products. No longer any copyright protections. No more Coke, Microsoft, Ford, GM, McDonald’s. All their enormous profits inside of China will fall to zero, and replacement companies will take their place. This would create an economic depression, societal disruption, and political chaos like no other.
And more…
Conclusions
Of course, there are all sorts of other things that can happen. But we will find out soon enough what is going to happen. So there’s no point in too much speculation.
I don’t think that it will be “World War III”, though I can tell the reader that both China and Russia have knives at the throat of the United States right now, and if it tries and “funny business” there would be lethal consequences.
Let’s just wait and see.
But remember, boys and girls, don’t focus on the distraction. Focus on what is not being reported upon.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Lavrov said Russia is hoping for a written response in within a week.
Olympics begin in about a week and a half.
Martyanov and Orlov have suggested the possibility military alliance between Russia and China being signed in the meetings that will occur then.
Formal alliance or not, I would think a joint strategy or ensuring Russia's and China's separate strategies complement each other will occur.
Russia with its security proposal,rather starting high, have started at the bare minimum they require which is a buffer zone in the age of hypersonic missiles.
This is how Pepe Escobar puts it.
"In fact, whether U.S. and NATO functionaries like it or not, what’s really happening in the realpolitk realm is Russia dictating new terms from a position of power. In a nutshell: you may learn the new game in town in a peaceful manner, civilized dialogue included, or you will learn the hard way via a dialogue with Mr. Iskandr, Mr. Kalibr, Mr. Khinzal and Mr. Zircon."
In that article from 25th December his view on the Russia China partnership vs the US "Incidentally: any possible, future “counter threats” will be coordinated between Russia and China."
Dugin: Having Pulled the Gun Russia Must Shoot or Lose
Dugin applies "street-fighting" lessons to...the fate of millions
The Russia-NATO talks have taken the confrontation to a new level. Russia is firmly insisting on a formal refusal to accept the post-Soviet countries into NATO; the West persists in its position, offering in exchange something unnecessary and unimportant, or at least of secondary importance…
Moscow’s position in this case — and this is a new and important element — is not reactive and not passive, but offensive.
NATO has been actively pressuring us for 30 years, including during the whole of Putin’s 20-year period. But only now is Russia ripe to challenge this for real.
In big politics, only force decides everything. “For real” means “by force”.
Moscow is taking a serious swing. And now it is impossible to take a step back, otherwise what was the swing for? We know from gangster movies and from the business of the 90s, and even from street fights, that to pull out a gun (knife, machine gun) and not shoot is almost suicide. Whoever goes for aggravation must realize that if he doesn’t, he will. We are exactly at this point now.
The unipolar world is complete. Contrary to the desperation of Biden and world elites to make one last attempt to save globalism and American hegemony – and this is the meaning of Biden’s campaign slogan (Bild BackBetter – “Rebuild Everything Again and Better”, i.e. “Back to the unipolar 90s”), or Klaus Schwab’s thesis at the Davos forum (Great Reset) – historical time is not reversible: Russia and China already represent two independent poles, solidarity on the major world problems. This means that multipolarity is established here and now.
In history, however, the change of the global world order, alas, is often carried out through wars. Without them, those who lose in no way agree to recognize voluntarily the obvious change. It is a kind of reality check…
Apparently, we still have to do what we should have been done – and wasn’t – in 2014. Yes, the starting conditions are much worse, but better late than never. Nobody counts on “never” anymore. The Russia-NATO meeting showed that clearly. Both sides are ready to escalate, and now to give in means to lose irreversibly. The Kremlin clearly does not intend to do this. But the West simply cannot. That would not just be a loss of face, but an admission of defeat.
As usual, the Russians took a long time to get going, so now they must rush ahead.
Let me give you this great quote to help put things in perspective…
“Russia plans to engage its nuclear weapons not against those countries where it was launched against Russia, but against the mastermind cities where all the decisions were made.
To be exact, it is Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and numerous other American cities.
Please fully understand, in case American nuclear weapons are launched from, eg. Taiwan, or Poland, the Russian response will be to hit New York or Washington.”-Russian Duma deputy, Yevgeny Fyodorov.
Russia has delivered an ultimatum to the Empire. If it does not receive a satisfactory response what will the Russian “or else” be? I am sympathetic to the view of boomer commentators (Doctorow, Armstrong, Helmer) that it will not be an invasion of Ukraine but something entirely else. I am sympathetic because I hope they are right. Trouble is when I read their guesses what that something else might be (except Helmer’s who refuses to speculate) it all seems rather underwhelming. All this circus only to station Russian troops in Venezuela or park a missile frigate off the coast of Washington, DC…it just isn’t the sort of stuff that would mean a great deal to Russia. But what does mean a lot to Russia?
Russia has a policy of no-first-use on nuclear weapons, but there is one caveat. If subject to a conventional attack of such ferocity that it should be indistinguishable from a nuclear strike then Russia says it’s atom-splitting time. What does it mean for a conventional attack to be the equivalent of a nuclear one? In Russian historiography the damage the Soviet Union suffered in WW2 (25 million war dead, 60 million people and 40% of industry lost to occupation) is often likened to the equivalent of a nuclear strike. In other words, should there be another Operation Barbarossa Russian atomic forces will not rest. Barbarossa famously advanced to roughly the present-day Russian-Ukrainian border reaching cities such as Kharkov and Rostov.
Might there be another thing that to Russia would be the equivalent of getting hit by a nuclear strike? According to Vladimir Putin yes, there is. In his last year’s article on Ukraine Putin writes that historic Russian lands settled by people who are Rus’ being forged into “an anti-Russia” is the equivalent of an WMD attack on Russia:
It would not be an exaggeration to say that the path of forced assimilation, the formation of an ethnically pure Ukrainian state, aggressive towards Russia, is comparable in its consequences to the use of weapons of mass destruction against us.
Putin argues that if one branch of the Rus people, primarily perhaps due to Soviet-era nation-building, developed a separate non-Russian identity and nation-state that this is a reality that Russia can, and must, live with.But when that state is rabidly anti-Russian that this is crossing a red line:
All the subterfuges associated with the anti-Russia project are clear to us. And we will never allow our historical territories and people close to us living there to be used against Russia. And to those who will undertake such an attempt, I would like to say that this way they will destroy their own country.
Having on its former lands a state composed of its own people who are looking out for their best interest is one thing, but having an entity driven solely by anti-Russianism is entirely another:
Today, the ”right“ patriot of Ukraine is only the one who hates Russia.Moreover, the entire Ukrainian statehood, as we understand it, is proposed to be further built exclusively on this idea. Hate and anger, as world history has repeatedly proved this, are a very shaky foundation for sovereignty, fraught with many serious risks and dire consequences.
The very act of anti-Russia prioritizing reflexive anti-Russianism even over Ukrainian national interests is what convinces Putin it is ultimately illegitimate and possibly “a tool in someone else’s hands”:
Russia is open to dialogue with Ukraine and ready to discuss the most complex issues. But it is important for us to understand that our partner is defending its national interests but not serving someone else’s, and is not a tool in someone else’s hands to fight against us.
No doubt having 50 million of your countrymen with shared ancestry and ethnicity spin out into a separate nation, and then having that nation become increasingly defined by antagonism against you is a bitter pill to swallow. Especially if the separation comes about as a result of top-down policies in the aftermath of a Communist coup. It is also a state of affairs that few powers with the means to challenge it would not seek to rectify. (Lincoln’s invasion of the South comes to mind.)
I do find that a Russian invasion of Ukraine would be totally out of character for what Putin’s Russia has been up until now. But I also remember that Putin has moved the bounds of what was possible for Russia before. Both the 2014 takeover of Crimea and the 2015 expedition to Syria were unthinkable for Russia as it had been until then. Russia in the past twenty years has been capable of some evolution, particularly in the international arena. Putin’s very article on Ukraine would have been entirely unthinkable 20 years prior. It now stands as proof that this old centrist statist has — under the pressure of external forces and under the influence of internal ones — gradually and after much resistance assimilated a smidgeon of Russian nationalism.
I don’t know if Russia is going to march into Ukraine. I certainly don’t know how that is supposed to fix Putin’s problem of Ukraine being “anti-Russia”. Isn’t a war between the two only going to deepen animosities and provide Ukrainian nationalists with more fodder? Try as they might at least until now it has been very difficult for Ukrainian nationalists to find historical examples of Ukrainians and Russians spilling each other’s blood.
Putin lays the blame for Ukraine’s anti-Russianism at the feet of “Western authors”:
The Western authors of the anti-Russia project set up the Ukrainian political system in such a way that presidents, members of parliament and ministers would change but the attitude of separation from and enmity with Russia would remain.Reaching peace was the main election slogan of the incumbent president. He came to power with this. The promises turned out to be lies.Nothing has changed. And in some ways the situation in Ukraine and around Donbas has even degenerated.
But is that really so? Critics may say that Putin is at least as responsible for the dominance of anti-Russians in Kiev as any Westerner. Putin certainly played his part in events that removed 6 million Russian speakers in Donbass and Crimea from Ukrainian voter rolls. Moreover, the Russian-aided rebuff of Kiev’s attempted takeover of rebel Donbass by military means provided the nationalists with the much-needed semblance of a Russian-Ukrainian war. One of the critiques against Putin is precisely that in 2014 he helped deal near maximum damage to Ukrainian-Russian friendship at the popular level while getting Russia nothing but the 2-million Crimea in return. There were those who proposed that since Ukraine would henceforth be lost to anti-Russianism anyway he may as well have grabbed the entire Russian-speaking (and Russia-friendly) half.
In reality, it is neither Westerners nor Putin who are primarily responsible for the hold of “anti-Russians” over Kiev. As Putin says, twice now (with Poroshenko and especially with Zelensky) the voters have rallied behind a negotiated-settlement candidate only for the latter to turn into a hawk once in power. The cause is ultimately found in the nature of fractured systems such as democracy. Ukraine has multiple centers of power and additionally the notionally top leader is actually a weak one because his position is one of the least secure. Pursuing peace which takes a lot of investment outright for a very distant payoff isn’t the optimal strategy for a leader who is besieged from all sides and just trying to survive into the next month. A cheap pro-war policy that kicks the can down the road and pays minor but instant dividends is much better. Especially for the kind of room-reading empty suits that are likely to rise to the top in a modern electoral system.
Of course, one reason Putin didn’t order the military to occupy entire Russia-friendly Ukraine in 2014 are Moscow’s precious foreign exchange reserves. Moscow wants a Ukraine that is economically integrated with Russia and even plugged into its defense industry, but it definitely doesn’t want to be on the hook for the material condition of “our historical territories and people close to us”. We have seen as much in Donbass. While there has been significant investment into incorporated Crimea (to say nothing of Chechnya), the same hasn’t been the case for Donbass which today is economically worse off than it was in 2014 and exists in such an economic ghetto that the export of 1500 kilograms of sausage to Russia “bypassing Ukraine” is treated as newsworthy. (Why did it take eight years??) This comes on top of Russia having presided over the gradual killing off of all of its interesting (but independent-minded) leaders and their replacement by “economically-motivated” yes-men. If Moscow has a similarly progressive vision for Left-Bank Ukraine then I imagine a considerable portion of its residents would ask her to not bother liberating them. The money men around Putin; the Kudrins, the Chubaises, and the Grefs can not be counted on to release the sort of monies that reinvigorating Eastern Ukraine would take. (What they can be counted on is to mRNA-treat its people and cattle tag them.)
The final problem is that while rearranging borders in a coloring book is a blast, this isn’t a video game. The Russian military is an artillery-firepower army. It is incredibly lethal. The takeover of Southern and Easern Ukraine doesn’t happen without tens of thousands of deaths. Mostly Ukrainian. But didn’t Putin just explain that Ukrainians are Russians too? Well, I prefer my Malorussians deluded (and even anti-Russian) over dead.
I think a Russian offensive into Ukraine is a possibility (say 20%). I don’t think we should be eager for it.
Putin has already demonstrated to Ukraine that push comes to shove all of its Western “well-wishers” will abandon Kiev to its fight. Let’s hope he finds that sufficient.
Take it from someone who knows a little about fratricidal war: You don’t want one.
Russian troops are already arriving in Belarus, says secretary of its Security Council Alexander Volfovich. Trains with Russian military vehicles have been spotted all over the country. Here is one in Kolodishchi, just outside Minsk. Video by @MotolkoHelp from earlier today. pic.twitter.com/lFdPuwK2Rp
— Tadeusz Giczan (@TadeuszGiczan) January 17, 2022
Russia seems now ready to take on US sanctions head on, will Russia force many US congress reps to quit?
Up to now Russia has always sort of deflected US sanctions, by using evading maneuvers to protect their companies. But now Russia seems ready to hit back and make it painful.
Banning the companies that support American Congressmen
Yesterday the idea was floated to ban any US company which financed a US congress rep that votes for sanctions against Russia, for 5 years from the Russian market.
Oh. This could be bad.
Most US companies donate to some, at least the ones in the state, of both parties.
Apple alone does 3 billion sales in Russia, 5 years would be be 15 billion sales lost.
No problem for Russia. They just get everything from China. At a fraction of the cost.
A US rep is not worth 15 billion, so most likely, if such counter sanctions are officially announced, a US rep would quit to save the company from losing business.
That could mean a good chunk of congress reps would quit, and new elections would start and make the US even a worse political mess.
This could also be applied to media and think tanks. This would also throw a spanner in the US political system of “pay and play”.
The complete suspension of copyright/IP protection of US companies
Over the years other ideas were floated. One of the harshest is the complete suspension of copyright/IP protection of US companies: software, music, movies, pharma, the name itself…
That would mean Russia could effectively open source most software, as governments usually get source code of major softwares from the vendors, like Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, Android to check for security holes.
Big Pharma would also be hit, Russki Viagra anyone? Cialis? Xantax?
And copycats would bloom into a worldwide trade. All at a fraction of the cost. Instead of $10 for a single Viagra pill, it will now be 50 pills for a $1. And Big Pharma won’t be able to do a single thing about it.
Think what would happen if China joins Russia in doing this?
YIKES!
A third could be law warfare.
A Russian court could set a price of war reparations on US “adventures” like Vietnam, Iraq, Korea, use of nukes on Japan and the many others, at beyond 100 trillion, so that even the staunchest US allies would be tempted to get a piece of the action of this credit collection.
Overflights of US airlines and Boeing jets could also be banned, so that airlines would have to end leases of Boeing long distance jets.
Others are to confiscate/freeze equity in Russian companies owned by investors from sanctioning countries.
In general, Russia has endured lots of sanctions over many years, but plans are in place to go head on.
A lot of time was devoted to make them as painful as possible. There is speculation in the media, but the actual plans are kept under lock, no big announcements or media leaks.
But they ARE being seriously considered.
Sanctions seem a clever tool for the big guys, but if somebody hits back and you have a low pain threshold, it starts hurting. The fact is that they are outside the rules, so you might also get hit back under the belt. And chess masters plan many moves ahead, exactly where a hit under the belt gets the best result.
Some quotes
Russian forces arriving in Belarus should have implications for folks' perception of the size/scope of the operation. First time ever Eastern Mil District forces in Belarus. If you think its not a bluff, great. If you think its not going to be large-scale…I suggest a rethink.
— Michael Kofman (@KofmanMichael) January 17, 2022
And…
Several military districts doing a rolling call up of reservists to test the BARS reserve system. Some reporting a base official figure that they have 9k reservists signed up. Southern MD has a month long staggered call up. Sure looks like they're checking follow-on forces. https://t.co/Ccp4aYwZKQ
— Michael Kofman (@KofmanMichael) January 17, 2022
Let’s consider how the “pandemic” is changing the world
Q. What about the pandemic? You mentioned the Great Depression, and the effect that had on the US and Europe, but can the pandemic play a similar role in the sense of “We can do this together?”
A. It should. And there are some signs of it. So when you get to the local level, you do find people cooperating with one another, helping each other. In many poor places around much of the world, local groups have just gotten together to help people in need, sometimes in remarkable ways. The favelas in Brazil are among the most miserable slums in the world. I’ve seen them. They’re run by biker gangs, drug cartels. The police are also extremely violent. Well, what’s happened during the pandemic is that the gangs, the criminal gangs that have been terrorizing the favelas have been organizing people to deal with the crisis. In the favelas, plenty of people don’t even have water. They’re working to help people at least have access to water, to have access to vaccines, to help each other in need. If there’s somebody, an old man stuck in an apartment who can’t get food, they bring him food, things like that are happening on the ground. Now, go to the leadership level. What are they doing? They’re monopolizing vaccines for themselves. They are demanding that the huge pharmaceutical corporations, which are super rich, should maintain control of the exorbitant patent rights that were given to them by the neoliberal regime, a regime which is radically opposed to free trade.
And his thoughts about the changing workplace…
Q. What about work?
A. What’s a job? A job, for most people, is spending most of your waking hours following orders from a master, who is a totalitarian master. They can give orders of a kind that Stalin couldn’t have dreamt of. Stalin couldn’t have told people that you’re allowed to take a five-minute bathroom break or that you’re not allowed to talk to that person next to you. And maybe your master is kind enough to allow you the leeway, but it’s the master’s decision. That’s called getting a job. Today, most people think that’s the norm. They react like my grandmother did, and would, if you’d asked her if she was oppressed. That wasn’t always true. To go back to the early Industrial Revolution of working people, bitterly opposed this form of autocracy, which was taking away their dignity, their rights and keeps reviving today. Plenty of people are saying the same thing. In fact, many of the people who are just refusing to go back to work, the so-called Great Resignation, are saying it in their own way.
UKRAINE CRISIS: US ‘Toolboxes’ Are Empty
The toolbox is empty. Russia knows this. Biden knows this. Blinken knows this. CNN knows this. The only ones who aren’t aware of this are the American people, says Scott Ritter.
.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in a hastily scheduled, 90-minute summit in Geneva yesterday, after which both sides lauded the meeting as worthwhile because it kept the door open for a diplomatic resolution to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. What “keeping the door open” entails, however, represents two completely different realities.
For Blinken, the important thing appears to be process, continuing a dialogue which, by its very essence, creates the impression of progress, with progress being measured in increments of time, as opposed to results.
A results-oriented outcome was not in the books for Blinken and his entourage; the U.S. was supposed to submit a written response to Russia’s demands for security guarantees as spelled out in a pair of draft treaties presented to the U.S. and NATO in December. Instead, Blinken told Lavrov the written submission would be provided next week.
In the meantime, Blinken primed the pump of expected outcomes by highlighting the possibility of future negotiations that addressed Russian concerns (on a reciprocal basis) regarding intermediate-range missiles and NATO military exercises.
But under no circumstances, Blinken said, would the U.S. be responding to Russian demands against NATO expanding to Ukraine and Georgia, and for the redeployment of NATO forces inside the territory of NATO as it existed in 1997.
Blinken also spent a considerable amount of time harping on the danger of a imminent military invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces said to be massing along the Ukraine-Russian border. He pointed out that any military incursion by Russia, not matter what size, that violated the territorial integrity of Ukraine, would be viewed as a continuation of the Russian “aggression” of 2014 and, as such, trigger “massive consequences” which would be damaging to Russia.
Blinken’s restatement of a position he has pontificated on incessantly for more than a month now was not done for the benefit of Lavrov and the Russian government, but rather for an American and European audience which had been left scratching their collective heads over comments made the day before by President Joe Biden which suggested that the U.S. had a range of options it would consider depending on the size of a Russian incursion.
“My guess is he [Russian President Vladimir Putin] will move in, he has to do something,” Biden said during a press briefing on Wednesday. While presenting a Russian invasion as inevitable, Biden went on to note that Putin “will be held accountable” and has “never have seen sanctions like the ones I promised will be imposed” if Russia were, in fact, to move against Ukraine. Biden spoke of deploying additional U.S. military forces to eastern Europe, as well as unspecified economic sanctions.
Biden then, however, hedged his remarks, noting that the scope and scale of any U.S. response would depend on what Russia did. “It’s one thing,” Biden said, “if it’s a minor incursion and we end up having to fight about what to do and not do.”
Almost immediately the Washington establishment went into overdrive to correct what everyone said was a “misstatement” by Biden, with Biden himself making a new statement the next day, declaring that he had been “absolutely clear with President Putin. He has no misunderstanding, any, any assembled Russian units move across the Ukrainian border, that is an invasion,” and that there should be “no doubt at all that if Putin makes this choice, Russia will pay a heavy price.”
And just in case the President was not clear enough, Blinken reiterated that point following his Friday meeting with Lavrov.
Immutable
The U.S. narrative about Russia and Ukraine was immutable; Russia was hell bent on invading, and there would be massive consequences if Russia acted out on its intent. This was no idle threat, Blinken said, but rather represented the unified position of the United States and its allies and partners.
Or was it? In a telling admission, CNN’s White House correspondent, John Harwood, stated that the “minor incursions” statement by Biden was harmless, because (Harwood said) Putin already knew through sources that this was, in fact, the U.S. position. As for Europe and Ukraine, their collective confusion and outrage was merely an act, a posture they had to take for public consumption, since the optics of Biden’s statement “sounds bad.”
In short, the lack of an agreed-upon strategy on how to deal with a Russian incursion/invasion of Ukraine was an open secret for everyone except the U.S. and European publics, who being fed a line of horse manure to assuage domestic political concerns over being seen as surrendering to Russian demands.
Biden and his administration are old hands at lying to the American public when it comes to matters of national security. One only need look to Biden’s July 23, 2021, phone call with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani for a clear precedent into this inability to speak openly and honestly about reality on the ground. “I need not tell you,” Biden told Ghani, “the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban. And there is a need,” Biden added, “whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”
This, in a nutshell, is the essence of the posture taken by the Biden administration on Ukraine. Blinken has indicated that the U.S. has a toolbox filled with options that will deliver “massive consequences” to Russia should Russia invade Ukraine. These “tools” include military options, such as the reinforcement of NATO’s eastern flank with additional U.S. troops, and economic options, such as shutting down the NordStream 2 pipeline and cutting Russia off from the SWIFT banking system. All these options, Blinken notes, have the undivided support of U.S. European allies and partners.
The toolbox is everywhere, it seems—Biden has referred to it, as has White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. Blinken has alluded to it on numerous occasions.
There’s only one problem—the toolbox, it turns out, is empty.
While the Pentagon is reportedly working on a series of military options to reinforce the existing U.S. military presence in eastern Europe, the actual implementation of these options would neither be timely nor even possible. One option is to move forces already in Europe; the U.S. Army maintains one heavy armored brigade in Europe on a rotational basis and has a light armored vehicle brigade and an artillery brigade stationed in Germany. Along with some helicopter and logistics support, that’s it.
Flooding these units into Poland would be for display purposes only—they represent an unsustainable combat force that would be destroyed within hours, if not days, in any large-scale ground combat against a Russian threat.
The U.S. can deploy a second heavy armored brigade to Poland which would fall in on prepositioned equipment already warehoused on Polish soil. This brigade would suffer a similar fate if matched up against the Russian army. The U.S. can also deploy an airborne brigade. They, too, would die.
There are no other options available to deploy additional U.S. heavy forces to Europe on a scale and in a timeframe that would be meaningful. The problem isn’t just the deployment of forces from their bases in the U.S. (something that would takes months to prepare for), but the sustainability of these forces once they arrived on the ground in Europe. Food, ammunition, water, fuel—the logistics of war is complicated, and not resolved overnight.
In short, there is no viable military option, and Biden knows this.
Empty Sanctions Too
The U.S. has no sanctions plan that can survive initial contact with the enemy, which in this case is the collective weakness of the post-pandemic economies of both Europe and the U.S.; the over-reliance of Europe on Russian-sourced energy, and the vulnerability of democratically elected leaders to the whim of a consumer-based constituency. Russia can survive the impact of any sanctions regime the U.S. is able to scrape together—even those targeting the Russian banking system—far longer than Europe can survive without access to Russian energy.
This is a reality that Europe lives with, and while U.S. policy makers might think hard-hitting sanctions look good on paper, the reality is that whatever passes for U.S.-European unity today would collapse in rapid order when the Russian pipelines were shut down. The pain would not just be limited to Europe, either—the U.S. economy would suffer as well, with sky-high fuel prices and a stock market collapse that would put the U.S. into an economic recession, if not outright depression.
The political cost that would be incurred by Biden and, by extension, the Democrats, would be fatal to any hope that might remain for holding onto either house of Congress in 2022, or the White House in 2024. It would be one thing if Biden and his national security team were honest and forthright about the real consequences of declaring the equivalent of economic war on Russia. It is another thing altogether to speak only of the pain sanctions would cause Russia, with little thought, if any, to the real consequences that will be paid on the home front.
Americans should never forget that Russia has been laboring under severe U.S. sanctions since 2014, with zero effect. Russia knows what could be coming and has prepared. The American people wallow in their ignorance, believing at face value what they are told by the Biden administration, and echoed by a compliant mainstream media.
Propaganda About ‘Propaganda’
One of the great ironies of the current crisis is that, on the eve of the Blinken-Lavrov meeting in Geneva, the U.S. State Department published a report on Russian propaganda, decrying the role played by state-funded outlets such as RT and Sputnik in shaping public opinion in the United States and the West (in the interest of full disclosure, RT is one of the outlets that I write for.)
The fact that the State Department would publish such a report on the eve of a meeting which is all about propagating the big lie—that the U.S. has a plan for deterring “irresponsible Russian aggression”—while ignoring the hard truth: this is a crisis derived solely from the irresponsible policies of the U.S. and NATO over the past 30 years.
While a compliant mainstream American media unthinkingly repeated every warning and threat issued by Biden and Blinken to Russia over the course of the past few days, the Russian position has been largely ignored. Here’s a reminder of where Russia stands on its demands for security guarantees: “We are talking about the withdrawal of foreign forces, equipment, and weapons, as well as taking other steps to return to the set-up we had in 1997 in non-NATO countries,” the Russian Foreign Ministry declared in a bulletin published after the Lavrov-Blinken meeting. “This includes Bulgaria and Romania.”
Blinken has already said the U.S. will reject this.
The toolbox is empty. Russia knows this. Biden knows this. Blinken knows this. CNN knows this. The only ones who aren’t aware of this are the American people.
The consequences of a U.S. rejection of Russia’s demands will more than likely be war.
If you think the American people are ready to bear the burden of a war with Russia, think again.
Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD.
China Has Edged Ahead of Russia in Air vs Air Capabilities (With Russian Help)
Editor’s note: The caveat is that Russia does not intend to fight pure air vs air battles. Russian doctrine envisages fighters and ground anti-air working together as a part of a whole. Nonetheless, purely looking at fighters China is now in the lead. Russia is still a little ahead in engines, but China has more advanced radars and better munitions. [— Russia still hasn’t managed to field an AESA radar.]
The old formulation that in the Sino-Russian alliance the Chinese are the economic superpower and the Russians the military superpower is one that will increasingly have to be amended. The Chinese are already the equals in military tech and may eventually pull ahead.
The text below is an abstract. For the entire 60-page report click here: Link.
The Soviet Union, and latterly Russia, have been the source of both aerial and ground-based pacing threats to Western airpower since the end of the Second World War. However, from a position of dependency on Russian aircraft and weapons, China has developed an advanced indigenous combat aircraft, sensor and weapons industry that is outstripping Russia’s. As a result, for the first time since 1945, the likely source of the most significant aerial threats to Western air capabilities is shifting.
Modern air combat is primarily decided by the balance of advantage in situational awareness. Given broadly comparable numbers, the force which can provide its aircrew with superior awareness of enemy position, track and identity will have a major advantage in any clash. In scenarios where situational awareness is relatively equal, missile reach and seeker performance, crew experience, aircraft performance, electronic warfare (EW) and countermeasures systems all contribute to the likely outcome.
Russia and China currently field superficially similar combat aircraft fleets. Both rely heavily on the Su-27/30 ‘Flanker’ family of combat aircraft and their various derivatives. They have also both pursued a fighter with low-observable (LO) – also known as stealthy – features, alongside increased multirole capability for their main fighter fleets. However, a clear Chinese lead is now emerging over Russia in most technical aspects of combat aircraft development.
The Flanker family of combat aircraft share: a large radar, optical and heat signature; potent kinematic performance; a relatively long range on internal fuel; and the ability to carry heavy ordinance loads of air-to-air or air-to-ground weapons. This makes them comparatively easy to detect and, in the case of Russian Flanker types, the lack of a modern active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar restricts them to relatively ‘brute force’ tactics using powerful but easy-to-detect radars and missiles which are outranged by their Western counterparts.
China has developed J-11 and J-16 series Flanker derivatives featuring AESA radars, new datalinks, improved EW systems and increased use of composites, which give them a superior level of overall combat capability to the latest Russian Flanker, the Su-35S.
This advantage is increased by Chinese advances in both within-visual-range (WVR) and beyond-visual-range (BVR) air-to-air missiles. Unlike the latest Russian R-73M, the PL-10 features an imaging infrared seeker, improving resistance to countermeasures. More significantly, the PL-15 features a miniature AESA seeker head and outranges the US-made AIM-120C/D AMRAAM series. China is also testing a very-long-range air-to-air missile, known as PL-X or PL-17, which has a 400-km class range, multimode seeker and appears to have been designed to attack US big-wing ISTAR and tanker aircraft.
China has developed and introduced into service the first credible non-US-made LO, or fifth-generation, fighter in the form of the J-20A ‘Mighty Dragon’. Subsequent developments are likely to increase its LO characteristics and sensor capabilities, as well as engine performance, with construction of the first production prototypes of the J-20B having begun in 2020.
Overall, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) and People’s Liberation Army Navy are rapidly improving their combat air capabilities, including a focus on the sensors, platforms, network connectivity and weapons needed to compete with the US in cutting-edge, predominantly passive-sensor air combat tactics.
The Russian Su-57 Felon is assessed as not yet having matured into a credible frontline weapons system, and as lacking the basic design features required for true LO signature. However, it does offer the potential to correct many of the Flanker family weaknesses with greatly reduced signature and an AESA radar, while improving the already superb agility and performance of the Flanker series. [The Su-57 doesn’t need to be as stealthy from the side and rear because unlike the Chinese very-long-range J-20 it’s not supposed to venture outside the air defense bubble. That said it is true that so far the Chinese have demonstrated more “stealth” tech than the Russians — and in much greater numbers.]
The Russian Air Force (VKS) does not currently field targeting pods for its ground-attack and multirole fleets. This limits the ground-attack aircraft to internal equivalents with inferior field of view and tactical flexibility, and the multirole fighters to reliance on either pre-briefed GPS/GLONASS target coordinates, radar-guided weapons or target acquisition using fixed seekers on the weapons themselves. This limits VKS fixed-wing capabilities against dynamic battlefield targets compared to Western or Chinese equivalents.
China is actively pursuing unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) designs with multiple programmes at various stages of development. Detailed assessment is hindered by tight control of information leaks by the Chinese Communist Party. Of those known to be in development, the GJ-11 subsonic attack UCAV appears the most advanced.
Russia is also pursuing UCAV-style technologies and has produced the Su-70 ‘Okhotnik-B’ technology demonstrator. However, it is not yet clear what degree of practical operational capability the Russian aircraft industry will be able to develop through the Su-70, especially given the demands for significant levels of in-flight autonomy inherent in UCAVs designed for state-on-state warfare in heavy EW conditions.
China’s advanced and efficient Flanker derivatives, as well as lightweight multirole fighters in the shape of the J-10B/C series and potentially a developmental FC-31 LO fighter programme, are likely to provide the leading source of non-Western combat aircraft from the mid-2020s onwards. Likewise, their air-launched munitions will increasingly outcompete Russian equivalents on the export market. As such, the development of Chinese capabilities should be closely monitored even by air forces which do not include the PLAAF in their direct threat assessments.
The possibility of technology transfer from China to Russia in the combat air domain could potentially increase the threat level posed to NATO by Russian airpower in the longer term, should such a dynamic emerge.
ISS crews train in the US and Russia to understand the US and Russian parts of the station, if only for emergency evacuation procedures. The US has just cancelled the visa of a Russian cosmonaut due to visit the US for his USS-ISS training sessions.
How totally pathetic and spiteful.
This Is One of the Most Important Essays You Will Ever Read
“I passionately wanted to take a machine gun and cross the damned nine-story building in a long burst”
Editor’s note:Alexander Lebed was a Soviet soldier and general, a challenger of Yeltsin, the protector of Russians and Ukrainians on left-bank Dniestr, and of the Russian-Ukrainian state, the rebel Pridnestrovie (Transnistria) they had founded.
He was also the person who cut the Gordian Knot and delivered Russia peace from Yeltsin’s Chechen War after the latter handed him the negotiations as a poisoned chalice that he resolutely accepted knowing fully what it was.
He was the son of a Gulag survivor and participated in internal Soviet peacekeeping (in the late 1980s) in Azerbaijan, on the basis of which he wrote this important essay presented below.
“On the evening of the 7th, the “Time” program announced a huge earthquake in Armenia…The exact number of victims was unknown, but preliminarily, they were estimated to be huge – tens of thousands of people.
The announcer switched to another topic, but no one would listen to him. Moreover, someone turned the TV off. An oppressive silence hung in the lobby. Suddenly, a strangle sound burst into this silence – or rather, a gamut of sounds merged into a single, general, triumphant joyful howl that would become more and more intense.
In seconds, everything became clear. On the opposite side of the street, in front of the building of the district executive committee, there was a large residential nine-story building. Every window without exception was illuminated, and on every balcony, people were yelling, hooting, and laughing wildly. Empty bottles, lighted paper, and some other objects were being thrown down.
This nine-story building was not alone in displaying its cannibalistic enthusiasm. A similar pattern was observed in all nearby houses.
The area was shining and howling ecstatically. People who considered themselves civilized; to one degree or another brought up and educated; many, presumably, believers professing the commandments of the Koran – all these people in a unanimous impulse were indecently, barbarously celebrating the colossal alien human grief.
I passionately wanted to take a machine gun and cross the damned nine-story building in a long burst and somehow make the people who have fallen to the level of monkeys return to their human form again.
How many kind, cheerful, intelligent, welcoming people I have met among Azerbaijanis! What passionate, convincing speeches many of them gave to me! Where did they go, all reasonable and kind, how was it possible that they all disappeared in this foam and succumbed to the rush whose degree of infamy is difficult to determine?”
Editor’s note: Should a day come when we find ourselves in danger of falling down to the level of beast or ape we can only pray there might be an Alexander Lebed with a machinegun nearby to get us to snap out of it.
From Lebed’s memoirs, translated by Vigen Avetisyan at Art-A-Tsolum.
The 1988 Armenian earthquake killed 25,000-50,000 people.
I have to admit that when I heard that the US has no intention of giving the Russians anything in writing I began wondering whether it even made sense for Lavrov to fly to Geneva. Yet, Lavrov thought otherwise and flew to the Swiss city. The outcome? Meh…
The US wants another week to prepare a written reply. Okay, that is some kind of result and I suppose that, considering what is at stake, waiting yet another week is okay. Frankly, the Russians are acutely aware of two things:
US diplomats and experts are, at best, clueless amateurs
The War Party is in full-blow hysterics mode
So they decided to give “Biden” another week. Like a teacher who agrees to give a particularly dumb student a few extra days to turn in his assignment.
What else?
Well, there is this: remember the rather weird words by Biden about a “minor incursion“? (since then, both Biden himself and Blinken has declared that Biden was misunderstood).
Today former ambassador McFaul, a true russophobic nutcase and certified imbecile, said that if the Russian soldiers go as far as Kiev this would trigger a full-scale response from the US and its allies.
Wait! What?
Since when do the Russian have to get their soldiers as far as Kiev to get sanctioned???
Before continuing, a few absolutely CRUCIAL reminders:
Russia neither wants nor has any reason at all to invade country 404, with all its intellectuals already long gone (most of them in Russia, low qualified refugees when to clean EU toilets), its deindustrialized wastelands, its many neo-Nazis and zero natural resources (they already sold it all). In fact, most Russians are categorically opposed to any such intervention.
The only thing which could force Russia to use her ground forces would be a successful (and rather unlikely) Ukrainian invasion of the LDNR. Russia currently does have the forces needed for such a counter-attack in her western regions. She does not have the size of force needed to occupy the Ukraine.
Russia has the means to defang the Ukie military using only standoff weapons, Russian military experts believe that such an operation would take a week or even less.
In other words, the notion of a Russian ground operation to take Kiev is total, hallucinatory, nonsense. Ditto for the idiotic idea that Russia must invade in February before the frozen ground turns into dirt (Russian ground forces have no problems operating or fighting with dirt, snowmelts or any other natural phenomenon between -50C to +50C). That is exactly the kind of crap McFaul always spews (with this uniquely paranoid eyes and freaked-out facial expression). But the fact that McFaul is a drooling idiot does not mean that he does not have access to what is going on behind the scenes (Blinken is just as dumb, and he is in charge of the entire US diplomacy).
So what gave him this truly weird idea?
First Biden with his “minor incursion”.
Now McFaul with his “no Russian soldiers in Kiev”.
I can offer three possible explanations for that:
The Biden Admin is doing a “April Glaspie” operation on Russia: tell the Russians that the US will do little or nothing as long as Russia only liberates some areas (presumably in the eastern and/or southern Ukraine) only to then take that as a pretext and declare some kind of war (probably not military, but political and economic for sure).
The Biden Admin is really trying to get rid of the Ukie suitcase and wants to break up this monstrosity into smaller, much more manageable, successor states. If so, I like the idea.
The Biden Admin is ready to let the LDNR break-away and move under the protection of Russia. Officially, of course, the USA will never agree to that, but they can present that as a problem they did not create and they could not solve alone either (or something else along similar PR lines).
Now, like I always repeat, there is a HUGE difference between “possible” and “likely”. The explanations above are only *possible* explanations for the weird language coming out of Biden and McFaul.
I also hasten to add that I don’t think that Russia will accept any such terms because they only refer to the Ukraine and not to a new international world order with a new international security framework, which is really what the Russians are after. And we are talking about verifiable, binding, security guarantees – not written, or even less so, oral, assurances.
However, if these proposals are made as one part of a much broader package of ideas, then they would be worth at least considering.
I have to tell you that my feeling is that the US has already at least partially lost control of the Ukraine and possibly even the EU.
Remember how I always write that when the US President is weak (which all of them since Bush Sr. have been) then the various branches of government and administrations begin doing their own thing, having a semi-official foreign policy of their own: one by the CIA, another one by the Pentagon, another one by Foggy Bottom, etc.?
Well, the same applies to US colonies: when the colonial master is weak and in deep crisis, the colonies begin feeling that they can act more independently. For example, the 3B+PU gang are now clearly setting the agenda in the EU, and the old Europeans à la Germany of France have become quasi irrelevant. Likewise, I am not confident at all that the real, hardcore, Ukronazis give a damn about what the US has to say, especially since the said Ukronazis seem to have the solid backing of the EU and parts of the Ukie government: just look at how Ze was unable to deal with Poroshenko – that will tell you a lot about the real correlation of forces in Banderastan.
This is the “tail wags the dog” thing on an international level.
All that is to say that I don’t find it likely that some big deal is being worked on behind the scenes.
But I do find it possible.
We shall find out soon, in one week or less according to the US side.
In the meantime the Ukies are massing a very large force right across the line of contact. I think of these Ukie forces like I think of folks driving motorcycles without a helmet: organ donors. Should the Ukies use that force to actually attack, the Russians will destroy that force in 24 hours or less. The problem is that Ukronazis are 1) rather stupid 2) totally fanaticized and 3) utterly unaware of the realities of modern warfare.
By the way, from a purely US point of view having the Ukronazis wiped out by Russian strikes is not a bad outcome as it would get rid of loads of truly crazy and unsavory characters.
I think of it as a “de-nazification by Russia” (along the lines of the expression “suicide by cop”).
One more thing: remember the rumors about the Russian evacuating their diplomatic personnel from Kiev? Turns out that it ain’t Russia, but the US and EU representations which are being evacuated (at least partially).
In the meantime, Stoltenberg wants Sweden and Finland to join NATO while many EU countries are now sending (small) forces into various locations in Eastern Europe. The worst of them all, the Baltic statelets, are now shipping Stinger MANPADs to the Ukies. Knowing how many Takfiris and neo-Nazis nutcases there are in Banderastan, this is absolutely, totally and terminally irresponsible! Yet those demented idiots are doing it. Typical.
I wish everybody a peaceful and great week-end!
Andrei
A comment
From Dennis Dennis
I must admit sadly that it s hard to find a wise and intellectual thinking American, therefore first I want to congratulate you for your wise and thoughtful ideas.
I am from Germany and in all discussions with americans I feel a taste of superiority and superficial thinking.
I am astonished about their neglect that russia is nuclear armed superpower which can in war end life on earth as we know.
If you talk all the time your opponent as unimportant and not to take serious than you got the public opinion easily that you do not be afraid about russia but we should all take russia serious when there is conflict with russia.
So first we must take russia demands for it s security very serious to have our security !
War is no option with russia and that must be clear to any fool !
Ukraine was not and will not be our main interest.
hat s the spehre of interest of russia and let it be. We can no have all regions in the world in our sphere of interest. We must differ between important and not so important.
And honestly europe did never want ukraine be part of europe and nato because we want to avoid conflict with russia at the very beginning and it s wise to do so.
The US must stop thinking it can control every country and region.
Simply said: avoid russia and try not to be close to russia for our own sake
I’m not sure even a NATO mosquito could cross the Russian border unmolested. And when a bear is lethally threatened, it doesn’t posture; it charges in a mighty roar. So why the Russian ultimatum? There are many plausible motives, many of which are not mutually exclusive. I’d like to focus on an aspect that hasn’t been discussed yet.
The last ten to twenty years could be characterized as a rivalry between China’s desire to re-balance the world’s economy, and the US’s effort to maintain the Dollar’s supremacy. China rose on the back of Western consumerism. There is only that much the West economy can absorb of China’s growing production, and that limit has clearly been exceeded. If China is to pursue its economic development, it needs additional “advanced” export markets to sustain its growing middle class. This is the Chinese necessity underlying the BRI, it cannot grow without the world growing with it.
Until recently it was content with a simple strategy: Enter several disparate countries at a time and start economic projects. Soon enough the US intervened to discipline the offenders; but they cannot strike all at once, choices must be made. Meanwhile, China approaches another bunch with still more economic projects. The US gets slowly overwhelmed, while the projects advance two steps forward, one step backward. On paper, it looks like an expensive proposition, but that is the beauty of it, it’s all paid for with US paper, while gold is accumulated. This entire period is comparable to the early and middle stages of a Go game
There is a point however when all these mini economic hubs must consolidate into a unified stream of connections to realize their full potential. That means no more US military interference and economic/financial disruptions. It seems we are now entering the late stage when “eyes” must be locked and linked.
There is little question the latest Russian move was long prepared and discussed with China. We may assume a common goal, and that none of the recent events are coincidences.
China and Russia favor and promote inter-currency settlement of trades. The Digital Yuan (E-CNY, electronic China Yuan) is designed for this purpose and has just completed successfully its live trials. It is reasonable to expect its official announcement in the near future. There are rumors this will be done during Putin’s visit to the Olympics. Regardless of the exact launch date, preparation must be made against the predictably harshest US resistance to its international deployment. There’s little doubt in my mind that many, if not most of East Asia will readily incorporate the new crypto iteration of the Yuan. However the Kazakhstan events, which were clearly foreseen with great precision, essentially opened up the entire Central Asian economies to its eventual use. With the recent 400bn commitment to Iran and the ongoing Pakistani projects, one may merrily add them to the bunch. India is free to join whenever they deem it in their best interest. This brings us right to the doorsteps of the Middle East.
Let’s now briefly revisit the US’ choices taken during the middle stage game. Since East Asia was growing to displace the US and EU as China’s main trading partner, Washington initiated their “pivot East” strategy to disrupt their momentum. Because of the sorry state of both their economy and military, they had to “delegate” the task of containing Russia on its western border to the EU. The Ukraine, in this context, can be seen as the “pretext” for the EU to activate NATO in Eastern Europe. However, as “pivot East” was floundering, they further needed to draw on their middle east assets (it’s becoming increasingly difficult not to laugh at what I must write). To this effect, they devised the Abraham Accords to similarly delegate the task of containing the “Shiite Axis” to Israel and the Golf States. The first “casualty” of these infamous Accords was probably Pakistan’s definite defection to the BRI, which further precipitated the Afghani debacle. To correct that mistake they then tried another formation with India, Japan, and a few others, followed by AUKUS, which both turned into flops, guided by the same imperative to relieve the strain on their military in an attempt to remain relevant on all fronts.
To control the Middle East, the US needs control of Europe, if only to secure their supply line. And to influence Central Asia they must control the Middle East. Until now Washington was essentially calling the shots, while Russia and China adapted their plans to whatever was thrown their way. By submitting their security demands, Russia is signaling unequivocally it is now taking the initiative. While the reinforcement of the Ukrainian Army was first designed to pressure some Russian reaction so as to increase the European nations’ commitment to toe the anti Russia line, the resulting Russian built-up of forces and large scale exercises have effectively reversed the pressure. The bulk of NATO forces are now bogged down on the eastern European front in a self induced paranoia, severely restricting their possible redeployment elsewhere.
With the Russian ultimatum the US is now basically faced with the following choices. Sign the documents, which by extension will mean the Minsk agreement and opening of NS2, but would free NATO reinforcement to the Middle East, no matter how futile this would ultimately prove. Because if this happens Europe will quickly “organically” link to the Asian network and recover most of its sovereignty from the US. At that moment, the Middle East is lost.
By not signing, the choice becomes loosing the middle East or release the pressure in East Asia, in both cases China wins.
If they don’t reinforce the Middle East, Pakistan is soon to be followed by the entire region. Though there could be some fireworks in the process, once the dust settles the BRI will be staring straight at Africa, throwing its full weight at European and American interests on that continent. If that happens, Europe falls.
Finally if they do “save” the Middle East at the detriment of East Asia, the Asian power house will become such that no one will escape its gravitational pull for long.
It is not very difficult to see, in this context, that whichever region the US decides to forsake, it’s only a matter of time before they lose the rest. Of course, this all assumes they don’t first crumble under the weight of their debts. Will they turn nuts and try blow it all up? I can only attest that the one thing greater than their evil idiocy, is their cowardice.
“Russia plans to engage its nuclear weapons not against those countries where it was launched against Russia, but against the mastermind cities where the decisions were made. To be exact, it is Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and other American cities. Please fully understand, in case American nuclear weapons are launched from, eg. Taiwan, or Poland, the response will hit New York or Washington.”
-Russian Duma deputy, Yevgeny Fyodorov.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
The situation is very weird. America has a President who is essentially a shit-stain in the seat of his expensive blue suit. So at least publicly, America is being governed by a shit-stain. America is just going to collapse. Not that this would be a bad thing.
America is devolving into an open rancid sewer along all the dimensions that constitute a Society…Americans are escaping into drug use and Fantasy Football-and into Fantasy in general….I can’t wait for that apex of American Civilization known as the Super Bowl half-time show in five weeks…
To para-phrase the tune Officer Kumpke from the 1961 Blockbuster Westside Story:We are doomed…We are doomed…We are doomed….followed by a young Russ Tamblyn doing a back flip into the septic tank-know as America….
-War for Blair Mountain
Completely Outplayed by Russia’s Diplomacy and Sabotaged by its Own Actions, The Outlaw US Empire is Now Having a Temper Tantrum
Since Russia issued its Security Demands which are listed in my previous articles, a number of excellent essays were published that filled in some important holes in the historical record that the narrative associated with the security demands omit.
In advance of the talks last week, Washington rhetorically agreed that European security cannot be decided over the heads of the EU and Ukraine, before then simply going ahead with the bilateral US-Russia format. Simply put, Washington cannot do diplomacy with Eurocrats in the room.
Russia thus has a hand of 5 Aces, which are the two separate and later broken promises made regarding Germany’s reunification and Warsaw Pact’s decommissioning combined with no Eastern NATO movement, and the three separate OSCE Treaties on Collective European Security that all essentially say that no nation or group of nations can secure its/their security while making another nation insecure.
Either the Outlaw US Empire apologizes for its wrongdoings, or it breaks the three treaties atop the other two promises it’s already broken. Aside from overturning the card table, those are the only two possible outcomes. Russia has played its diplomatic hand superbly and has already won. The Anglo’s problem is which choice to make in reply.
What Blinken and NATO are doing is what sore losers and outlaws do when they’re caught-out–they draw their 6-gun. Clearly, the Outlaw US Empire can’t admit it was outplayed diplomatically, nor can it admit its dishonesty and issue an apology. It’s acting like a juvenile delinquent by throwing a temper tantrum.
I spend my time, retreated from society, writing thinking and image-making. I’m presently writing a volume about Modernity. My perception is thus necessarily the long haul. Unfortunately these last few days the anti-system bloggers, who constitute my first source of information, were overtaken by too much fantasy for my taste.
.
To console myself in this period of the Year I hereafter share a Geopolitical Christmas tale that is rooted in the last episodes of actuality.
As a preamble…
Power in today’s world is far more complex than a matter of military dominance. Moscow, Beijing and Washington have furthermore an acute understanding that the present Geopolitical contradictions can’t be solved by a world war which would simply cut the escape of their societies and plunge their citizens in a Berezina.
.
In that sense Geopolitics has now to be viewed as the systemic complexity of the interactions between the open societal fields (internal and external) of all nations on earth. .
The present Geopolitical moment is a very special moment indeed. .
.
Two trends have been solidifying over the centuries of Western Modernity: On one side the center of gravity of the economy-world has been shifting, away from the West, toward East-Asia and more particularly toward China : .
This is the 8th such a shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world over the entire span of Modernity… What is different this time is that the center of gravity is leaving the territorial area of the Western civilization which explains the madness that has overtaken Western capitals
.
On the other hand Western countries have been accumulating a multitude of side-effects over the last centuries of Modernity. The nature of these side-effects is double : – damages to the habitat of living species (nature) through different forms of pollution – damages to the societal organization of the human species through the pollution of ever more individualism that is concluding presently with the cancer that is societal atomization.
.
The present moment is more particularly characterized by “The Great Convergence of Late-Modernity” : .
The convergence, within Western societies, of Neo-liberalism and Postmodernism has unleashed a superficial globalization of Western Modernity to the 4 corners of the world while internally this convergence has forced Western societies into – societal inequality – pauperism – hyper-individualism – a complete loss of meaning – an individual feeling of isolation – and so many more unfortunate facts that are all aspects of societal atomization which means that such societies are no longer united entities and in that sense successful collective undertakings are no longer in their reach (no shared worldview left to glue the individuals in a unified societal whole).
.
The convergence, within nature, of a multitude of side-effects, that resulted from “the reason that is at work within the transformation of money into capital”, were called “externalities” because capital refused to pay for eliminating their life disrupting character. These side-effects have thus been left to freely disrupt the equilibrium that has ensured the abundance of flora and fauna and more particularly the stability that ensured an ever increasing complexity of human societal life over the last 10,000 years.
.
Lately the effects of these disruptions, within Western societies and within nature, have started to converge and are forcing humanity to face its predicament : “what now ?”. Most of us are oblivious to this predicament. But most scientists and some public decision-makers, a rarity in the West, are well aware of this situation… Those of us who listen carefully know for a fact that Beijing and Moscow are realist and are thus well aware of the extreme complexity of the present situation :
.
An acute awareness has emerged in the minds of the realists that to face the predicament of humanity it is indispensable, first and foremost and also urgently, to solve 1.1. which basically calls for a new world order in which the West is forced to play by the new rules of the game that the community of nation decides upon.
.
The United Nations’ effort to combat climate change has taught a few important lessons : .
*** the West will never contribute in an adequate manner for the bulk of externalities that it is directly responsible for .
*** climate change is merely a symptom of the larger problem which is that the side-effects of Modernity are destroying the habitat of living species
A Geopolitical Christmas Tale…
.
Moscow and Beijing are well aware of the disintegration of the cultural, social, and economic realities in the West that I sketched in 1.2. and in 2. and they have patiently been waiting for the most propitious moment to initiate a strategy to placate the West. It so happens that their forecasting services alerted them to an exceptional convergence of factors that would culminate with the Beijing Winter Olympics. .
Whatever the Western propaganda might be trying to force in the minds, of the people of this earth, the fact of the matter is that Western countries, in 2020, have entered the greatest depression in the whole of Modernity and this depression is bound to last, at least 10 years but most probably more, creating massive poverty and misery while disintegrating the sickest among Western societies. .
Covid like a pin first deflated the Western financial bubble in 2020. The FED’s response was the shuffling of uncounted trillions of dollars of paper around the economy in the hope of igniting the animal spirits on Wall Street. This was realized, among other, by :
.
— Cutting Federal funds rate to a range of 0% to 0.25%
— Purchasing massive amounts of debt securities with a questionable value
— Colossal amounts of low interest rate loans to the largest primary dealers
— Lending to banks against collateral in IOUs or commercial paper
— Funneling cash to overnight repo-markets
— Expansion of International swap lines
— Massive amounts of funding to foreign central banks without swap lines
— Cash to the banks against questionable paper collateral at the discount window
— Support of the flow of credit to U.S. corporations
— Lending to corporations through the Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF)
— Lending to households, consumers, and small businesses against asset-backed securities
— Backstopping municipal and state borrowing
— Etc… .
The result of this financial largess became visible in the second part of 2021. An ever increasing inflation sows misery in the poorest families and people resist this inflation by claiming higher wages which results in the multiplication of social conflicts. .
We furthermore recently discovered that all this would be topped this winter by a new wave of Covid infections. The forecasts indicate that the Omicron surge could push the number of infections to their highest level yet. The UT COVID-19 Modeling Consortium at the University of Texas at Austin projects that by the end of January, more than 500,000 people could catch the virus every day on average … with and estimated 3,876 deaths per day on average… .
In sum the West is confronted with : societal disintegration + the greatest of all depressions + hyperinflation + social conflicts + a new Covid wave that could be worse than the earlier ones. The least we can say is that this is going to fatally weaken the US and the same can be said of Europe.
.
And then came the following…
.
2021-12-07 : Putin and Biden have a 2 hour video-talk about the Ukraine crisis.
2021-12-07 : President Biden says that putting American troops on the ground in Ukraine to deter a potential Russian invasion is “not on the table” and that he hoped there would be an announcement by Friday 9th of high-level meetings with Russia and major NATO allies to discuss Moscow’s “concerns relative to NATO writ large” and the possibility of “bringing down the temperature along the eastern front.” .
2021-12-15 : Putin and Xi have a video call and discuss tensions in Europe and the “aggressive” U.S. and NATO rhetoric. Wang Wenbin, spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, answered the following to a reporter who asked him what was the outcome of this video-call : .
“The world is witnessing the combined forces of changes and a pandemic both unseen in a century against the backdrop of complex and profound changes in the international and regional landscape. We believe that China and Russia, two permanent members of the UN Security Council, take on an important mission in defending regional peace and stability and promoting development and the revitalization of all countries.
. For some time, certain countries have been drawing ideological lines, building new military blocs and stoking regional tensions, which have all brought grave threats and challenges to regional peace and stability and global strategic stability. China and Russia firmly reject this.
. We will continue to follow the two leaders’ consensus, take up responsibility, unite all forces that love peace and support peace, and make active contribution to realizing sustained, universal and common security in the region and the wider world.”.There was no way for China to assert more clearly that it is siding with Russia in its demands… but everyone seems to have missed the seriousness of the Chinese side ……except for M. K. Bhadrakumar who is one of the most lucid observers out there.Few people understand the meaning of the expression “the two leaders’ consensus”. This expression relates to the will of their countries to see these two leaders in place for the long haul during the stabilization of the post-Western world order.Both countries, not in their unanimity but certainly in their large majority, have sensed since some years already that they have someone unique in their present president. A person who outshines the other decision-makers around them in term of their stamina and their mental clarity. How is it possible, that the West does not get this, is beyond my understanding ?.2021-12-17 : Moscow releases the texts of two documents in the form of two draft treaties that many interpreted as an ultimatum of Russia to the West.2021-12-17 : Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg asserts the alliance’s prerogative to intervene in Ukraine and bluntly rejects Moscow’s notions that it could have a say on the alliance’s future expansion plans.2021-12-19 : Christine Lambrecht, German Minister of Defense, Asserts that NATO was willing to discuss Moscow’s demands but would not allow Moscow to “dictate” to the alliance or its partners.By the 20th of December Western media were littered with articles belittling the partnership between China and Russia as “still having an artificial flavor” and suggesting that China would never fight the US along Russia.
.
Ultimately, they proclaim, Russia will join the West in defeating China.
.
But this is the propaganda of a rear guard of Western ideologues who are bluffing their way trying to force their madness on all nations that refuse to submit to their unilateral order. .
The Russian treaty/ultimatum has to be understood as a first act in a wider strategy that is being played out, in concert by Russia and China, in order to provoke the financial and economic fall of the US.
.
But why pushing the US to fall precisely now ?
.
Well the present context offers a unique opportunity. The Chinese sages never tired to repeat that if you are forced to fight you do it when your enemy is at its weakest ! And the present Geopolitical context announces the coming of the peak bacterial catalysis infesting Western wounds. This is why pushing the US to fall precisely now has the best chances to succeed. .
Now about China. It is without any doubt an a-religious country.
.
Its early-power society grew, as the outcome of the cultural unification of its tribes, sometimes between 6000 and 5000 years ago. And thereafter it constantly actualized animism with present changing trends by topping it with add-ons in the same way as open-source software integrates innovations from the community… Now animism was a highly pragmatic knowledge formation approach that is rooted in observation over the very long haul that led to the induction of abstract principles from this observation. Animism remains in application today in its appellation of “Chinese Traditional Culture” which is a form of animism+. .
This means that China is — a-religious — highly pragmatic — and a reserved nation with reserved individuals. .
What this means is that the Chinese thinking is not driven by ideology and is not experiencing the need to impose itself on others. Having said that the Chinese have been observing the vile racist aggression coming out of the West over the last few years. They have spoken little. They have observed and have been thinking hard. And now they are at the end of their strategic patience. Chinese leaders know darn well that they have not much of a history in diplomacy which means, if I may say so, that their practice has not had the time yet to grow into a perfectly polished whole. That is why China, in all humility, openly recognizes Russia’s ‘panache’ in the diplomatic field and now relies on it to position its own. .
So it was only natural for China to let Russia publicly initiate the decisive movement forward in their common play for a new world order. China publicly sided with Russia when it announced its treaty-proposal/ultimatum and what is most important is that China detains the weapon of last resort which is the termination of US dollar payments for the delivery of its goods and services. ;
.
Fast forward…
.
Russian leaders have informed their Western counterparts that if they do not start to negotiate soon they will take the necessary technical measures to make them understand that they are deadly serious. It seems that Westerners have understood this part of Russia’s argument. Russian leaders even went further and informed very publicly that if the West was participating in negotiations in order to drag them down they would use their technical means to awake Western attention. .
The latest news is now that negotiations will start in the beginning of January 2022. In the eyes of the Russians one month is amply sufficient to reach an agreement and if there is no agreement by the end of the month they say that they will act. .
Coincidentally President Putin and President Xi will meet in Beijing to open the Winter Olympics on the 4th of February 2022 at Beijing National Stadium. The Russian timing of the conclusion of its negotiations with the US and Nato coincides thus with the very public and media relayed meeting of President Putin and President Xi ! Ho ho… .
Now the fact is that the discourse of Russian leaders leaves no place for a 3rd alternative as a possible outcome of these talks. From what we hear it is — or “we have a deal” and the West accepts a retreat to its posture before the fall of the Soviet Union — or “we have no deal” and China and Russia, on the 4th of February, announce their further game-plan to the world. .
Some Russian officials have already announced that one of the measures that they could take if there is no agreement is to refuse payment in dollars for any goods they export…
.
And the fact is that China’s Digital Yuan is ready for use by the Chinese public at large. By October there were already 140 million people who had opened “wallets” and remember that this digital yuan has been designed, over the last 7 years, to act as a new technical payment system for international exchanges that will thus for the first time be free of Swift’s intervention and Washington’s judicial long arm…
.
This Digital Yuan will also be connected to block-chains that will handle the currency exchange between Yuan and local currency, the final payment as well as tax matters, transportation matters,… all this promises to erase the hefty bank commissions and lengthy bureaucratic delays which should catch the attention of the buyers of Chinese goods while reducing the volume of exchanges in US dollars. .
To get a sense of how the digital Yuan is going to impact the world watch these 2 interviews of Richard Turrin who is one of the most knowledgeable English speakers about the subject.
Humanity’s fate will most probably be decided in this first quarter of 2022
The first quarter of 2022 will most probably be remembered, for a long time to come, for having decided humanity’s model of collective response to “the Great Convergence of Late-Modernity“. If I’m proven right then what happens in this month of January will be determinant for the future of humanity. .
So how best can we summarize the situation ?
1. The general context of the 2020’s
To understand what is humanity’s present situation we have first to comprehend the context in which the nations on this earth are interacting today. .
1.1. The countering of Western hubris
After the fall of the Soviet-Union the West got caught up in a bout of hubris that completely detached it from reality. It thought that its liberal world order had triumphed, that history was coming to an end, and that it got crowned master of humanity. But the nature of reality is a bitch. It always finishes by erasing what goes against its way. .
So how is the nature of reality countering Western ways ? .
1.1.1. The relations between nations are conditioned by the realities of their internal situations
societal cohesion glues the minds of the individual citizens in a collective entity that acts as one entity. The fact of the matter is that Russia, China, and other non-Western countries are strong and cohesive societies.
.
societal atomization un-glues the minds and makes it impossible for a nation to continue to act as one national entity. The fact is that Western nations have engaged on an individualist path since many centuries and over the last 50 years they have atomized in a mass of self-centered egos who can no longer act as one nation.
.
the fact of the matter is that societally atomized nations, in all circumstances, lose to societally cohesive nations
.
1.1.2. Reactions to a Western centric International order
.
Confronted to Western centric International organizations, that one-sidedly protect Western interests while their governance systems are one-sidedly being kept in the hands of Western countries, China and the bulk of the world population are creating new International institutions that better cater to their interests : — the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) — the Belt and roads (new Silk Roads) — and the next institution that will dethrone the dollar of its world monetary reserve status could very well be on its way… .
Such new institutions are the sole defense mechanisms against Western non-democratic practices within the present international order. See for yourself.
.
Europe has 2 representatives in the Security Council of the United Nations while India, Africa, the Tri-Continental-Area, and Latin-America have no representatives.
.
This gives the West a majority in the Security-Council with a veto power while it barely representsely 10% of the world population.
‘.
The same kind of hegemonic domineering is at work at the world Bank where the US has 15.56 % of the voting rights. Japan has 7.31 %. China has 5.42%. Germany has 4.17 %. The United-Kingdom has 4.05 %. France has 4.05 %, India has 3.16%. Russia has 2.87%. Canada has 2.82 %. etc… .
Now the fact is that the deeper, the existing Western order is being countered by new institutions, the weaker that order becomes and the more pressing is the agreement, of all countries on this earth, about the structuring of a new system of world governance that could take on the predicament of humanity.
.
Conscious of this China and Russia think that the time has come to confront the West to the realities of the present context.
.
1.1.3. Fiat money is an instrument of exchange that is ruled by two First Principles
Contrary to what ideologies are peddling the money in circulation must be sufficient but may not surpass the exchanging needs of society. In other words, within the realm of the economic rules of the game, the economic actors need to have access to money in order to practice their exchanges. If the money in circulation does not satisfy their needs then the value of that money starts to increase and prices start to fall bringing about an era of deflation. But when the money in circulation surpasses their needs that money starts to lose its value and prices start to increase bringing an era of inflation. .
The US has without a shred of a doubt engaged in monetary hubris over the last decades and more particularly over the last 3 years when the volume of dollars in circulation abruptly increased by nearly 50% while the economic activity of the country was flat at a near 0% growth rate ! In this context it is not surprising that reality would slowly be re-imposing its way. As a consequence the value of the dollar started to decrease and US citizens are confronted to increasing prices. Seen the canyon full of recent dollar creation there is no escaping its rout in value. US citizens will thus be forced to confront hyper-inflation while foreign exporters to the US will not escape the necessity to increase their prices. Some might even soon refuse to be paid in US dollars all together. .
These realities are inescapable and the most important question that nobody dares to ask is “what happens when China refuses dollars as payment for its exports ?”.
.
To use a fiat currency it is imperative that the citizens and the International community trust the emitter of that fiat currency. A dwindling trust in the emitter comes at the cost of the value of its currency and the citizens as well as the International community start to look for alternatives. .
US citizens have visibly lost trust in the emitter of the dollar and those who are awake to the nature of monetary realities are converting their dollars in all kinds of other instruments among which cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are the most visible. But citizens are also converting their fiat dollars in many other items like : art works, antiques, real estate, farming land, raw materials and all kinds of “real non-perishable goods”. The International community has also taken notice and is reducing its holdings of US paper instruments while converting those in “real non-perishable goods”. Another avenue that the International community has been exploring is — the replacement of Swift as the exclusive intermediary of International transfers of US dollars — the replacement of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. China and Russia have created their own swift and China’s digital Yuan is available to import and export companies from China or working with China. If interested to understand how the system works watch these 2 interviews of Richard Turrin who is one of the most knowledgeable English speakers about the subject. China’s Central Bank Digital Currency by Fat Tail Investment Research Big Tech in China and the Digital Yuan by Oriol Caudevilla
.
1.1.4. The military is a tool of last resort
.
In a last resort the nation with the most potent military always comes out of the conflict as a winner takes all and it then automatically becomes the architect of the next cycle of International relations.
.
2. The present situation
.
Russia feels cornered its back against a wall and it has had enough of all the bullying by Western nations.
2.1. The first round
In the words of President Putin Russia has no margin left to take a step back against the Western encirclement and it wants written guarantees about the principles of a level playing field that will give all parties confidence in their security. To that effect Russia proposed 2 treaties between itself and the West and its military-wing Nato. It also informed the West and the world that the negotiations needed to be short and to the point and that the treaties need to be signed immediately. If these conditions are not respected President Putin and others in his administration have informed that Russia would take appropriate military and technical actions to protect itself against what they describe is the naked aggression by the West against Russia’s sovereignty..
2.2. The 2nd round
.
Some Western representatives rejected any compromise with Russia and in the footsteps of this news a propaganda campaign was launched against the imminent attack of Ukraine by Russia. Russia repeatedly denied this accusation and gave the West a time limit to answer its treaty proposals in writing. If no answer is forthcoming Russia promises to act. The West then proposed a meeting between the US Secretary of State and the Russian Foreign Minister. This proposal seems to have been accepted by Russia which shows that its answer would be so grave that it prefers to try once more the diplomatic card. But by the end of this week, by the 22nd or 23rd of January, Russia will need an answer on the table or its credibility will be tested indeed and so it will be forced to act.
.
2.3. The US plays the madman
.
The United-States are playing the role of the madman that President Richard Nixon had initiated against the Soviet Union in the nineteen-sixties and they are betting that the Russians will not dare to confront them. But the fact is that President Putin would never engage in a dog-fight that he knew he could not win.
.
3. Without a deal Russia will move to shell-shock the USA back into reality
.
In matter of fact only a very profound shock will awake Western big capital holders, and their servants the American and European public decision-makers, to the reality that their countries are cornered and have lost their military superiority. .
What kind of action could this be ?
.
Military experts are without any doubt better equipped than I’m to answer this question. But it nevertheless seems to me that, in today’s web addicted world what will be determinant in Russia’s action will be to gain the world’s attention to the fact that the USA has been duly informed about the superiority of Russian missiles. In consequence Russian actions will be limited; sparing lives but destroying US and Nato most crucial infrastructure. .
This vision gambles on the following facts :
Russia has assurances from China that it stands ready to act
.
the minds of US and European decision-makers are very deeply embroiled in ideology and can thus no longer think straight along the lines of reality
.
to be shocked back into reality will unmistakably be sobering the minds of Western populations
.
the minds of US old male decision-makers are still emotionally attached to the future fate of their grand-kids
.
all this should unleash sufficient pressure in the minds of US decision-makers to stand back and try to find a face-saving solution that the Russians and the Chinese can agree with.
However one looks at today’s situation the fact of the matter is that not acting now equals to further submit the world to Western diktats that become more egregious by the day. This would necessarily lead to an outcome that is far worse than whatever would be the outcome of the Russian-Chinese gamble that I have tried to describe.
We are making it clear that we are ready to talk about changing from a military or a military-technical scenario to a political process that really will strengthen the military security… of all the countries in the OCSE, Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian space. We’ve told them that if that doesn’t work out, we will create counter-threats; then it will be too late to ask us why we made such decisions and positioned such weapons systems. Мы как раз даем понять, что мы готовы разговаривать о том, чтобы военный сценарий или военно-технический сценарий перевести в некий политический процесс, который реально укрепит военную безопасность <…> всех государств на пространстве ОБСЕ, Евроатлантики, Евразии. А если этого не получится, то мы уже обозначили им (НАТО – прим. ТАСС), тогда мы тоже перейдем в вот этот режим создания контругроз, но тогда будет поздно нас спрашивать, почему мы приняли такие решения, почему мы разместили такие системы.
Moscow has issued an ultimatum to USA/NATO. It is this: seriously negotiate on the issues laid out here and here. Some of them are non-negotiable.
Ultimatums always have an “Or Else” clause. What is the “or else” in this case? I don’t know but I’ve been thinking and reading other peoples’ thoughts and some ideas/guesses/suppositions follow. They are the order that they occurred to me. Whether Moscow has such a list in front of it or not, it certainly has many “counter-threats” it can use.
Why now? Two possible answers, each of which may be true. US/NATO have been using “salami tactics” against Russia for years; Moscow has decided that a second Ukraine crisis in one year is one thin slice too many. Second: Moscow may judge that, in the USA’s precipitous decline, this will be the last chance that there will be sufficient central authority to form a genuine agreement; an agreement that will avoid a catastrophic war. (The so-called Thucydides Trap).
Of course I don’t know what Putin & Co will do and we do have to factor in the existence of a new international player: Putin, Xi and Partners. Xi has just made it clear that Beijing supports Moscow’s “core interests”. It is likely that any “counter-threats” will be coordinated. The Tabaquis have responded as expected but maybe (let’s hope so) Washington is taking it more seriously.
To my CSIS readers: the world is at a grave inflection point and the West had better concentrate its attention. Moscow and Beijing don’t depend on me for advice and I’m not talking to them: regard this as one of the briefing notes that I used to write. Moscow is serious and it does have real “counter-threats”.
MILITARY MEASURES
Moscow could publish a list of targets in NATO countries that can and will be hit by nuclear or non-nuclear standoff weapons in the event of hostilities. These would likely include headquarters, airbases, port facilities, logistics facilities, ammunition dumps, military bases, munitions factories and so on.
Moscow could station medium and short-range nuclear missiles in Kaliningrad and Belarus. The latter requires agreement from Minsk but Belarus President Lukashenka has hinted that it will be granted. Moscow could then make it clear that they are aimed at NATO targets.
Moscow could station Iskanders and have lots of aircraft in the air with Kinzhals and let it be known that they are aimed at NATO targets.
Moscow could make a sudden strike by stand-off weapons and special forces that destroys the Azov Battalion in Eastern Ukraine. Moscow would see two advantages: 1) it would remove the principal threat to the LDNR and 2) it would change the correlation of forces in Kiev. It would also be a live demonstration of Russia’s tremendous military power.
Moscow could remind the West of the meaning of Soviet Marshal Ogarkov’s observation that precision weapons have, to a degree, made nuclear weapons obsolete. A prescient remark, somewhat ahead of its time 35 years ago, but realised now by Russia’s arsenal of hypersonic precision missiles.
The Russian Navy operates the quietest submarines in the world; Moscow could could make and publish a movie of the movements of some NATO ship as seen through the periscope.
I believe (suspect/guess) that the Russian Armed Forces have the capability to blind Aegis-equipped ships. Moscow could do so in public in a way that cannot be denied. Without Aegis, the US surface navy is just targets. Objection: this is a war-winning secret and should not be lightly used. Unless, of course, the Russian Armed Forces have something even more effective.
Russia has large and very powerful airborne forces – much stronger than the light infantry of other countries, they are capable of seizing and holding territory against all but heavy armoured attacks. And they’re being increased. Moscow could demonstrate their capability in an exercise showing a sudden seizing of key enemy facilities like a port or major airfield, inviting NATO representatives to watch from the target area.
The Russian Armed Forces could do some obvious targetting of the next NATO element to come close to Russia’s borders; they could aggressively ping ships and aircraft that get too close and publicise it.
Moscow could make a public demonstration of what Poseidons can do and show in a convincing way that they are at sea off the US coast. Ditto with Burevestnik. In short Moscow could directly threaten the US mainland with non-nuclear weapons. Something that no one has been able to do since 1814.
Does the Club-K Container Missile System actually exist? (If so, Moscow could give a public demonstration, if not pretend that it does). Either way, Moscow could publicly state that they will be all over the place and sell them to countries threatened by USA/NATO.
DIPLOMATIC/INTERNATIONAL MEASURES
Moscow could publicly transfer some key military technologies to China with licence to build them there.
Moscow could make a formal military treaty with China with an “Article 5” provision.
Moscow could make a formal military treaty with Belarus including significant stationed strike forces.
Moscow could station forces in Central Asian neighbours.
Russia and Chinese warships accompanied by long-range strike aircraft could do a “freedom of navigation” cruise in the Gulf of Mexico.
Moscow could recall ambassadors, reduce foreign missions, restrict movement of diplomats in Russia.
Moscow could ban all foreign NGOs immediately without going through the present process.
Moscow could recognise LDNR and sign defence treaties.
Moscow could work on Turkey, Hungary and other dissident EU/NATO members.
Moscow could give military aid to or station weapons in Western Hemisphere countries.
Beijing could do something in its part of the world to show its agreement and coordination with Moscow raising the threat of a two front conflict.
ECONOMIC MEASURES
Moscow could close airspace to civil airlines of the countries that sanction Russia.
Moscow could declare that Russian exports must now be paid for in Rubles, gold, Renminbi or Euros (Euros? It depends).
Moscow could announce that Nord Stream 2 will be abandoned if certification if delayed past a certain date. (Personally, I am amused by how many people think that shutting it down would cause more harm to Russia than to Germany: for the first it’s only money and Russia has plenty of that; for the second….)
Moscow could stop all sales of anything to USA (rocket motors and oil especially).
Moscow could announce that no more gas contracts to countries that sanction it will be made after the current ones end. This is a first step. See below.
As a second and more severe step, Moscow could break all contracts with countries that sanction Russia on the grounds that a state of hostility exists. That is, all oil and gas deliveries stop immediately.
Moscow could announce that no more gas will be shipped to or through Ukraine on the grounds that a state of hostility exists.
Russia and China could roll out their counter-SWIFT ASAP.
SUBVERSIVE MEASURES
Moscow could stir up trouble in eastern Ukraine (Novorossiya) supporting secession movements.
Moscow could order special forces to attack key nazi organisations throughout Ukraine.
Moscow could order special forces to attack military facilities throughout Ukraine.
*********************************************
But I’m sure that whatever “counter-threats” Moscow comes up with will be powerful and surprise the West. My recommendation is that USA/NATO take the ultimatums seriously.
After all, the Russian proposals really are mutually beneficial – their theme is that nobody should threaten anybody and if anybody should feel threatened, there should be serious talks to resolve the issue.
Security is mutual:
if all feel secure, then all are secure;
if one feels insecure, then none is secure.
As we now see: when Russia feels threatened by what USA/NATO do, it can threaten back. Better to live in a world in which nobody is threatening anybody and everybody feels secure.
I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else.
Some great marching
You know, I’ve never really paid attention to the “goose step” march. But when I came to China I learned taht it is realy just a part of what is a much more interesting march. It’s worh the watch. video 17MB
(Note: by tradition, going back to the first Prussian Kriegsspiel, your side is “Blue”, the other side is “Red”. Soviets did it the other way round.)
According to David Halberstam, when Washington was considering escalating its presence in Vietnam, a wargame was held to test options. More bombing aircraft were put into airfields in Vietnam; Red attacked the airfields. Blue brought in more troops to guard the airfields; Red started attacking the supply lines for those troops. More troops to guard the supply lines; more attacks on their support systems. And so on: everything the American side thought up was quickly and easily countered by the Vietnam team. The results were ignored: only a game, not really real.
Forward to 2002 and a very large and complicated exercise simulating a US attack on – not named, but obviously – Iran. The retired USMC general playing Red – a no-nonsense experienced soldier who didn’t believe technology was the answer to everything (especially the projected wonders that the wargame granted to the American side), scorned business-school buzzwords like “network-centric” – thought outside the box and used low-tech weaponry. When the US high-tech took out his communications, as he knew they would, he went silent – his communications were by motorcycle dispatch riders, coded messages in Friday prayers and similar old-school techniques. He fired more missiles that the Blue side could handle and sank most of the invasion force and finished off the rest with swarms of small boats. “The whole thing was over in five, maybe ten minutes“. The invasion force was brought back to life, the rules were modified to reduce the defenders’ abilities – the Red force commander was on the point of destroying the reconstituted landing forces – and the US side “won”. He walked out when he decided that the game was too rigged for him to bother doing anything; as he said in a report: “this whole thing was prostituted; it was a sham intended to prove what they wanted to prove“.
Each of these wargames was supposed to be a learning and testing experience. The first was testing what to do and how to do it in Vietnam, the second, more ambitious, was supposed to test the whole package of the new US military in every aspect – it is said to have cost a quarter of a billion dollars and involved 13,000 participants. What was learned from the two? Certainly nothing was learned from the Vietnam wargame – Washington went ahead and put troops in – just a few at first but rising to an incredible 500,000 at the height and dropped a fantastic number of bombs; corners were turned, light was seen at the end of the tunnel but everyone knew it was a lost cause and no one wanted to say so. The enemy countered and endured everything and, at the end, the US went home defeated. The war game turned out to be a rather accurate predictor of the future. And it doesn’t appear that the US military have learned anything from the 2002 experience either. Certainly nothing in Washington’s behaviour towards Iran gives the impression that the US leadership imagines it could be defeated if it attacks Iran.
Nor, come to think of it, is there evidence that it learned anything much from the Vietnam reality either. Afghanistan was, in many respects, a replay of Vietnam: a determined low-tech force countered everything the US military could think up. In 2018, Les Gelb, the compiler of the Pentagon Papers said:
And now we move forward two decades. Last October another wargame simulated a US defence of Taiwan against a Chinese attack. Another test of some high-falutin war-fighting concept. (One might parenthetically ask how many of these concepts are actually business-school ideas given the predilection of USgeneralsforMBAs. Probably the worst imaginable preparation for what our USMC “Iranian” commander called a “terrible, uncertain, chaotic, bloody business“.) General John Hyten, Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman, and MBA, reported on the wargame:
The first thing that went wrong for the Blue force was that it suddenly lost all its communications – as I have been saying (and the Chinese and Russians surely know) one of the fundamental assumptions of the US style in war-fighting is constant, reliable, assured communications. All its “smart” weapons need to be “talking” to their controllers all the time: stop the “talking” and they become immediately “stupid”. Then the US force was hit with wave after wave of missiles. And the rear areas were hit with waves of missiles. And that was that. And, in another wargame in 2020, Poland was annihilated by the Russians: Warsaw was surrounded in five days.
What stood out for me in Hyten’s refreshingly honest presentation was this: “studying the United States for the last 20 years”. Washington officials are not noted for their ability to see things from the other side’s point of view, but he certainly got that one right. China (and Russia and Iran) know that they are on Washington’s hitlist. They have been watching Washington fight wars for two or three decades (winning none of them, despite the hype); they know how Washington fights; they know its strengths and weaknesses. They have put a lot of thought into it. One might also observe that, while Washington fights its wars safely overseas, China, Russia and Iran have very strong memories of wars fought on their own territory. This gives them, as Andrei Martyanov is always pointing out, a rather different view of war – it’s not some affair of choice far away over there, it’s a horrible, deadly, bloody, immensely destructive process in your own home.
Losing for them is not the American way of losing – no walking away, explaining away and forgetting away: it’s life or death. They take war seriously and they put the effort into thinking about how to defend themselves against an American attack. They know that air superiority and assured communications are the necessities of the American way of war; they know the US military expects to accumulate huge forces undisturbed. They haven’t used these years idly; they won’t wait for the Americans to leisurely assemble the force to bomb them. That’s why they have concentrated on EW and lots of missiles. The US won’t have secure communications, free air power or safe bases: Beijing. Moscow and Tehran, if they have to fight, will fight to win. And do whatever it takes; no umpire will appear to “call foul” and re-float the fleet.
In the real world, Ukraine’s “de-occupation” boasting was silenced in two weeks by a huge Russian mobilisation. Surely somebody in the Pentagon noticed that. HMS Defender’s adventure off Crimea (incidently the only one of the six ships of its class actually fit for sea – not, in itself, a very impressive performance) may also have taught some lessons about the consequences of silly gestures.
Nothing was learned from the Vietnam or Iran wargames, what about this one? General Hyten said:
That sounds good – “clean-sheet” – but you know that nothing will really change. Vietnam was supposed to teach a lesson (and the US Army certainly did improve) but, essentially, it did the same things all over again in Afghanistan. For twice as long. I doubt that this exercise will cause the full-scale change that he’s talking about. Complacency will probably return.
Even so, one would like to be a fly on the wall when US senior military brief the President: “failed miserably”, Afghanistan defeat (coming soon to Iraq and Syria), Russian and Chinese military power, hypersonic manoeuvring missiles, EW, layered air defence. The briefings can’t be too upbeat, can they? Could this be why the big exercise in the Black Sea ended so quietly? Could this be in the background of the decision to stop trying to block Nord Stream? Could this be a reason why Biden asked to meet with Putin? The couch-warriors will never understand this of course, but perhaps one can hope that the generals will – Hyten seems to have but, just as American wars are a sequence of one-year wars because each commander kicks the failure down the road for his successor to worry about, his replacement may return to the complacency of being at the top of “the greatest military in the history of the world“.
But, one can hope they’ll learn a little humility.
DONBASS. It should be understood that the official position in Moscow at present is that the rebel areas are part of Ukraine and the Minsk Agreement provides a method for resolving grievances. (Note, BTW, given the constant refrain that Moscow must “comply”, that it has no obligation). But this position could suddenly change given that Kiev has never fulfilled any part (especially No 4) and that Kiev’s “allies” haven’t tried to make it. One of the many possible “Or Elses“.
GALICIA. Anybody know why Ioseb Bissarionis-dze decided to put it in the Ukrainian SSR rather than giving it back to Poland in 1945? An important decision as it’s turned out.
LESSONS LEARNED. Little countries often try to play off the big guys against each other. But Kazakhstan and Belarus have just learned that this isn’t possible today because Washington wants total control. Others will learn from these examples.
NUGGETS FROM THE STUPIDITY MINE. I don’t remember Soviet propagandists assuming their consumers to be as stupid as the creators of this do. Ummm – you told us that Putin tried to kill him, he’s completely in his power now: shouldn’t you at least spend a little effort coming up with some explanation for why he’s still alive to give interviews to you?
SWEDEN. This week drones, last week the Russians were going to snatch Gotland. Years ago somebody in the Swedish security apparatus told me that these stories – “submarine sightings” in those days – were faked up by the people in the Swedish security organs who want it to join NATO.
A treaty with Washington isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. That’s just how I see it, surely saner and smarter men have also noticed this.
-Baxter
Wendy Sherman thinks her aim in talks with Russian officials starting Monday is to lecture them on the cost of hubris. Instead she’s set to lead the U.S., NATO, and Europe down a path of ruin, warns Scott Ritter.
.
If ever a critical diplomatic negotiation was doomed to fail from the start, the discussions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine and Russian security guarantees is it.
The two sides can’t even agree on an agenda.
From the Russian perspective, the situation is clear:
“The Russian side came here [to Geneva] with a clear position that contains a number of elements that, to my mind, are understandable and have been so clearly formulated—including at a high level—that deviating from our approaches simply is not possible,”
Ryabkov was referring Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demands to U.S. President Joe Biden in early December regarding Russian security guarantees, which were then laid out by Moscow in detail in the form of two draft treaties, one a Russian-U.S. security treaty, the other a security agreement between Russia and NATO.
The latter would bar Ukraine from joining NATO and rule out any eastward expansion by the trans-Atlantic military alliance. At the time, Ryabkov tersely noted that the U.S. should immediately begin to address the proposed drafts with an eye to finalizing something when the two sides meet. Now, with the meeting beginning on Monday, it doesn’t appear as if the U.S. has done any such thing.
“[T]he talks are going to be difficult,” Ryabkov told reporters after the dinner meeting. “They cannot be easy. They will be business-like. I think we won’t waste our time tomorrow.”
When asked if Russia was ready to compromise, Ryabkov tersely responded, “The Americans should get ready to reach a compromise.”
All the U.S. has been willing to do, it seems, is to remind Russia of so-called “serious consequences” should Russia invade Ukraine, something the U.S. and NATO fear is imminent, given the scope and scale of recent Russian military exercises in the region involving tens of thousands of troops. This threat was made by Biden to Putin on several occasions, including a phone call initiated by Putin last week to help frame the upcoming talks.
Yet on the eve of the Ryabkov-Sherman meeting, U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken simply reiterated these threats, declaring that Russia would face “massive consequences” if it invaded Ukraine.
“It’s clear that we’ve offered him two paths forward,” Blinken said, speaking of Putin. “One is through diplomacy and dialogue; the other is through deterrence and massive consequences for Russia if it renews its aggression against Ukraine. And we’re about to test the proposition of which path President Putin wants to take this week.”
Lessons of History
It is as if both Biden and Blinken are deaf, dumb, and blind when it comes to reading Russia.
Ryabkov has alluded to a fact already made clear by the Russians—there will be no compromise when it comes to Russia’s legitimate national security interests. And if the U.S. cannot understand how the accumulation of military power encompassed in a military alliance which views Russia as a singular, existential threat to its members’ security is seen by Russia as threatening, then there is no comprehension of how the events of June 22, 1941 have shaped the present -day Russian psyche, why Russia will never again allow such a situation to occur, and why the talks are doomed before they even begin.
As for the American threats, Russia has given its response—any effort to sanction Russia would result, as Putin told Biden last month, in a “complete rupture of relations” between Russia and those countries attempting sanctions. One need not be a student of history to comprehend that the next logical step following a “complete rupture of relations” between two parties that are at loggerheads over matters pertaining to existential threats to the national security of one or both is not the peaceful resumption of relations, but war.
There is no mealy-mouthed posturing by Foggy Bottom peacocks taking place in Moscow, but rather a cold, hard, statement of fact—ignore Russia’s demands at you own peril. The U.S., it seems, believes that the worst-case scenario is one where Russia invades Ukraine, only to wilt under the sustained pressure of economic sanctions and military threats.
Russia’s worse-case scenario is one where it engages in armed conflict with NATO.
Generally speaking, the side that is most prepared for the reality of armed conflict will prevail.
Russia has been preparing for this possibility for more than a year. It has repeatedly shown a capability to rapidly mobilize 100,000-plus combat-ready forces in short order. NATO has shown an ability to mobilize 30,000 after six-to-nine-months of extensive preparations.
The Shape of War
What would a conflict between Russia and NATO look like? In short, not like anything NATO has prepared for. Time is the friend of NATO in any such conflict—time to let sanctions weaken the Russian economy, and time to allow NATO to build up sufficient military power to be able to match Russia’s conventional military strength.
Russia knows this, and as such, any Russian move will be designed to be both swift and decisive.
First and foremost, if it comes to it, when Russia decides to move on Ukraine, it will do so with a plan of action that has been well-thought out and which sufficient resources have been allocated for its successful completion. Russia will not get involved in a military misadventure in Ukraine that has the potential of dragging on and on, like the U.S. experience in Afghanistan and Iraq. Russia has studied an earlier U.S. military campaign—Operation Desert Storm, of Gulf War I—and has taken to heart the lessons of that conflict.
One does not need to occupy the territory of a foe in order to destroy it. A strategic air campaign designed to nullify specific aspects of a nations’ capability, whether it be economic, political, military, or all the above, coupled with a focused ground campaign designed to destroy an enemy’s army as opposed to occupy its territory, is the likely course of action.
Given the overwhelming supremacy Russia has both in terms of the ability to project air power backed by precision missile attacks, a strategic air campaign against Ukraine would accomplish in days what the U.S. took more than a month to do against Iraq in 1991.
On the ground, the destruction of Ukraine’s Army is all but guaranteed. Simply put, the Ukrainian military is neither equipped nor trained to engage in large-scale ground combat. It would be destroyed piecemeal, and the Russians would more than likely spend more time processing Ukrainian prisoners of war than killing Ukrainian defenders.
For any Russian military campaign against Ukraine to be effective in a larger conflict with NATO, however, two things must occur—Ukraine must cease to exist as a modern nation state, and the defeat of the Ukrainian military must be massively one-sided and quick. If Russia is able to accomplish these two objectives, then it is well positioned to move on to the next phase of its overall strategic posturing vis-à-vis NATO—intimidation.
While the U.S., NATO, the EU, and the G7 have all promised “unprecedented sanctions,” sanctions only matter if the other side cares. Russia, by rupturing relations with the West, no longer would care about sanctions. Moreover, it is a simple acknowledgement of reality that Russia can survive being blocked from SWIFT transactions longer than Europe can survive without Russian energy. Any rupturing of relations between Russia and the West will result in the complete embargoing of Russian gas and oil to European customers.
There is no European Plan B. Europe will suffer, and because Europe is composed of erstwhile democracies, politicians will pay the price. All those politicians who followed the U.S. blindly into a confrontation with Russia will now have to answer to their respective constituents why they committed economic suicide on behalf of a Nazi-worshipping, thoroughly corrupt nation (Ukraine) which has nothing in common with the rest of Europe. It will be a short conversation.
NATO’s Fix
If the U.S. tries to build up NATO forces on Russia’s western frontiers in the aftermath of any Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia will then present Europe with a fait accompli in the form of what would now be known as the “Ukrainian model.” In short, Russia will guarantee that the Ukrainian treatment will be applied to the Baltics, Poland, and even Finland, should it be foolish enough to pursue NATO membership.
Russia won’t wait until the U.S. has had time to accumulate sufficient military power, either. Russia will simply destroy the offending party through the combination of an air campaign designed to degrade the economic function of the targeted nation, and a ground campaign designed to annihilate the ability to wage war. Russia does not need to occupy the territory of NATO for any lengthy period—just enough to destroy whatever military power has been accumulated by NATO near its borders.
And—here’s the kicker—short of employing nuclear weapons, there’s nothing NATO can do to prevent this outcome. Militarily, NATO is but a shadow of its former self. The once great armies of Europe have had to cannibalize their combat formations to assemble battalion-sized “combat groups” in the Baltics and Poland. Russia, on the other hand, has reconstituted two army-size formations—the 1st Guards Tank Army and the 20th Combined Arms Army—from the Cold War-era which specialize in deep offensive military action.
Even Vegas wouldn’t offer odds on this one.
Sherman will face off against Ryabkov in Geneva, with the fate of Europe in her hands. The sad thing is, she doesn’t see it that way. Thanks to Biden, Blinken and the host of Russophobes who populate the U.S. national security state today, Sherman thinks she is there to simply communicate the consequences of diplomatic failure to Russia. To threaten. With mere words.
What Sherman, Biden, Blinken, and the others have yet to comprehend is that Russia has already weighed the consequences and is apparently willing to accept them. And respond. With action.
One wonders if Sherman, Biden, Blinken, and the others have thought this through. Odds are, they have not, and the consequences for Europe will be dire.
Iran, China, Russia to kick off joint naval drills in Indian Ocean on January 21 — media
The drills will practice various maneuvers, in particular, rescuing a ship swept by fire, releasing a captured vessel and firing against targets.
TEHRAN, January 20. /TASS/. The Iranian, Chinese and Russian navies will begin joint naval maneuvers in the northern Indian Ocean waters on January 21, the ISNA news agency reported on Thursday, citing the Iranian army’s press office.
The drills will practice various maneuvers, in particular, rescuing a ship swept by fire, releasing a captured vessel and firing against targets. The drills are aimed at strengthening the security of international sea routes, fighting piracy and maritime terrorism and exchanging experience, the news agency reported.
Russia’s Pacific Fleet reported on January 18 that the Fleet’s naval group made up of the Guards Order of Nakhimov missile cruiser Varyag, the large anti-submarine warfare ship Admiral Tributs and the large sea tanker Boris Butoma had arrived at the Iranian port of Chabahar for the joint drills of the Russian, Iranian and Chinese navies.
The Pacific Fleet’s naval task force departed from Vladivostok and embarked on its long-distance deployment several days before the new year 2022.
Ever since Putin announced his demands for security guarantees from the US and NATO (in brief, stop NATO’s eastward expansion, have NATO retreat to its positions of 1997 and remove offensive weapons from Russia’s immediate vicinity) we have been subjected to a barrage of irrelevancies from Western press:
• Are these security guarantees an ultimatum or a negotiating tool?
• Will the US and NATO agree to them or reject them?
• Will Putin invade the Ukraine or will he be stopped in his tracks through the judicious and timely use of frowning, head-shaking, finger-wagging and tisk-tisking by sundry and assorted Western luminaries?
• If Putin does invade the Ukraine, does this mean that World War III is finally upon us and we shall all surely die?
I hope that I am not alone in being sick and tired of this pathetic, tiresome attempt to throw up a smokescreen and hide the inevitable reality of what is about to unfold. In case it isn’t completely clear to you yet, I would like to spell it all out. I am normally more cautious when making specific predictions, but in this case our immediate future has been carefully plotted out for us by Russia and China, with the US and its assorted puppets reduced to the status of non-playable characters in a video game who can only do one thing: hide behind a dense smokescreen of risible lies.
First, Russian security guarantee demands are not ultimatums. An ultimatum is an “or else” sort of thing, offering a choice between compliance and consequences, whereas in this case both the noncompliance and the consequences will follow automatically. The West and NATO are, for well understood internal political reasons, unable to sign these guarantees; therefore, the consequences will unfold in due course.
Russia has demanded that both the US and NATO put their refusal to agree to the security guarantees in writing; these pieces of paper will be important moving forward. To understand why, we need to take on board the fact that everything within these security guarantees has already been agreed to by the West; namely, the “not an inch to the east” guarantee given to the Russians by the US 30 years ago and the collective security principle agreed to by all members of the OSCE. By signing a document in which they declare their refusal to abide by what they previously agreed to, the US and NATO would essentially declare themselves to be apostates from international law and order. This, in turn, would imply that their own security needs can be disregarded and that instead they deserve to be humiliated and punished.
Further, by putting their refusal in writing, the US and NATO would declare the collective security principle itself—specifically with respect to the US and NATO—to be null and void, meaning that if, for instance, the Bahamas, a sovereign nation since July 10, 1973, decides to reinforce its sovereignty by hosting a Russian missile battery pointed across the Gulf Stream at Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the US would have no say in the matter, and if the US did try to speak up, they’d get beat up with this very piece of paper they signed. “Do you feel threatened now?” the Russians would ask; “Well, maybe you should have thought of that when you threatened us by putting your missiles in Poland and Romania.”
The initial stated purpose of the two installations of Aegis Ashore in Poland and Romania was to shoot down Iranian missiles, which didn’t exist then, don’t exist now, and never would have taken a giant detour and fly over Poland or Romania in any case. Although the stated purpose of these systems was for missile defense, their launch platforms can also be used to launch offensive strategic weapons: Tomahawk cruise missiles with nuclear payloads. These Tomahawks are obsolete and the Russians know how to shoot them down extremely well (as they demonstrated in Syria) but this is still very annoying, plus seeding the Russian countryside with pulverized American plutonium would not be good for anyone’s health.
Thus, we should expect bad things to happen to these installations, but we should expect to remain rather ill-informed about the details. While the non-negotiations over the Russian security guarantee demands will be as public as possible (in spite of Western plaintive cries asking that they be held in private) the “technical-military means” which Russia will use to deal with Western noncompliance will not be widely publicized. The Romanian installation might become inoperative due to a newly discovered small volcano nearby; the Polish one might succumb of a freak swamp gas explosion.
A further series of unfortunate accidents may cause the US and NATO to become shy and reticent about encroaching on Russia’s borders. NATO troops stationed in the Baltics, a stone’s throw from St. Petersburg, which is Russia’s second-largest city, might complain of repeatedly hearing the word “Thud!” clearly and loudly annunciated, causing them all to be diagnosed with schizophrenia and evacuated. A US spy plane might experience a slight GPS malfunction causing it to blunder into Russian airspace, get shot down, and have its catapulted pilot sentenced to many years of teaching English to kindergarteners in Syktyvkar or Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. US Navy and NATO vessels, already prone to collisions with each other, underwater mountains and barges, might suffer an unusually large number of such mishaps in proximity to the Russian coastline, causing them to shy away from it. A large number of such events, most out of them transpiring out of sight of the public, news of them suppressed in Western press and social media, would force the mighty US military to confront an uncomfortable existential question: “Are the Russians still afraid of us, or are we just jerking each other off here?” Their response will be to go into denial and to jerk each other off harder and faster than ever before.
But if they are indeed just jerking each other off, then what about their policy of containment? What’s to contain Russia and keep it from recreating USSR 2.0?—other than the fact that the Russians aren’t stupid, learned their lesson the first time around, and Mother Russia will no longer allow a bunch of useless non-Russian ingrates to suckle at her ample bosom. “But when is Russia going to invade the Ukraine?” inquiring minds demand to know, especially those who have been paying attention to Western news sources claiming that Russia has amassed 100090 troops on the Ukrainian border (it hasn’t).
The latest theory is that what is preventing Russia from invading is the warm weather. Apparently, it has been unusually warm since 2014, which is why Russian troops haven’t rolled across the Ukrainian border yet. What have they been waiting for? The next ice age that’s due any millennium now? Instead, Russia just got the bits of the Ukraine it wanted—Crimea, the Donbass and a couple of millions of highly trained Russian-speaking professionals—all without staging an invasion, and is now waiting for the rest of the Ukraine to degenerate into its end state as an ethnic theme park and nature preserve. The only thing that’s not going well with this plan is that the Ukraine needs to be demilitarized, as required by Russia’s recent security guarantee demands.
But what if Russia’s security guarantees aren’t met and US/NATO continue stuffing the Ukraine full of weapons, sending in trainers and establishing bases? Well, then, those will need to be destroyed. This can be done by launching some rockets from small ships sailing around in the Caspian Sea, as was done to destroy ISIS bases in Syria; no ground force invasion needed. It won’t take much to prompt US/NATO to evacuate the Ukraine in a panic, seeing as they have already worked out plans for doing so and have announced that they won’t fight to defend it.
If that’s what unfolds, what do you think will happen next? Will the US start a nuclear war over the Ukraine? Umm… how about “NO!!!” Will the US impose “sanctions from hell”? Perhaps, but you have to understand that at this point in time the US and other Western economies can be accurately caricatured as a crystal vase full of excrement parked on the very edge of a high shelf over a hard marble floor. The hope is that nobody is going to sneeze because the sound pressure might cause it to go over the edge. Sanctions from hell do sound like they could cause a bit of a sneeze. Needless to say, the US will continue to talk about sanctions from hell and maybe even pass some legislation so titled, and claim to have sent “a strong message,” but to no effect.
Will Russia act immediately upon acceptance in writing the West’s refusal to provide it with the requested security guarantees? No, there is bound to be a delay. You see, February 4th is barely two weeks away, and that’s just not enough time to start and finish a military action. What’s on February 4th? Why, the opening ceremony at the Beijing Olympics, of course, at which Putin will be the guest of honor while US dignitaries weren’t even invited.
At the Olympics Putin and Xi will be signing a raft of major agreements, one of which may transform the already very strong relationship between China and Russia into an actual military alliance. The tripartite world order announced by Gen. Milley, in which the US, Russia and China figure as equals, will have lasted all of three months. With Russia and China acting as a unit, the SCO, which by now includes almost all of Eurasia, becomes more than just a geopolitical pole. In comparison, the US and the 29 dwarves of NATO do not quite add up to a geopolitical pole and the world once again becomes unipolar but with the polarity flipped.
And so we should not expect any military action to take place between February 4th and February 20th. Should any military mischief occur during the Olympics, which is traditionally a time of peace in the world, it is sure to be a Western provocation, since the Olympics are a traditional time of Western provocations (Georgia during the Beijing Olympics in 2008; the Ukraine during the Russian Olympics in Sochi in 2014). We can be sure that everyone is very much prepared for this provocation and that it will be dealt with very harshly.
The worst kind of provocation would be if NATO advisers actually succeed in goading the hapless and demoralized Ukrainian troops into invading the Donbass. If that happens, there will be two steps to that operation. The first will involve confusing the Ukrainians into walking into a trap. The second will be to threaten to destroy them using Russian long-range artillery from across the Russian border. When that happened previously, the Ukrainian government in Kiev was forced to sign the Minsk agreements that required the Ukrainian military to pull back and the Kiev government to grant autonomy to the Donbass by amending the Ukraine’s constitution.
But since the government in Kiev has shown no intention of fulfilling the terms of these agreements during the intervening years and instead has done its utmost to sabotage them, there is no reason to expect a new round of Minsk agreements to be signed. Instead, it will be the end of the road for Ukrainian statehood. Putin has promised exactly that. NATO advisers are likely to be frustrated in their efforts to cause the Ukrainians to attack: it is preferable for them to sit there being poked and prodded by their NATO handlers and nagged by US/EU officials and spies than to have their best and brightest obliterated by Russian artillery or to face a final round of national humiliation.
After February 20th, however, we should expect some new and interesting domestic distraction. It could have to do with Western financial house of cards/pyramid scheme finally pancaking, or it could be a fun new virus, or natural gas running out and causing a huge humanitarian emergency. Or it could be a combination of these: the virus can be blamed on China, the gas emergency on Russia, and the financial collapse on both. While everyone is distracted, an aircraft carrier or two might go missing, the Aegis Ashore installation in Poland might get totaled by freak swamp gas explosion and so on and so forth. But then nobody would take notice.
There will still be the major existential question nagging the US military/industrial complex: “Are Russia and China still afraid of us or are we just jerking each other off?” I think I know what answer Russia and China would offer: “Don’t worry about us. Just go on jerking each other off.”
Finally…
End of Part 4
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Russia is well-prepared for an all-out war with the west because they know that the American empire will not quit until they submit to Washington’s demands.
Russia is ready, they learned a long-time ago when they were the former Soviet Union during World War II when more than 27 million Russian civilians and soldiers lost their lives fighting Nazi Germany within their borders.
Washington is backing Ukraine’s aggressive behavior which will bring them closer to war with Russia.
Although I believe cooler heads will prevail, anything at this point in time can happen with an out of control empire worried about losing their control over the planet.
The US has its back against the wall, the question is what will they do knowing that Russia and China have the military capabilities including their new hypersonic missiles that can hit the US mainland at anytime.
The US-NATO forces would not prevail on a multi-front war with Russia and China, they should have learned a lesson in Afghanistan with the Taliban who had by far, a less-developed fighting force than Russia or China but had managed to defeat US-NATO forces after 20 years of conflict. Washington and the Pentagon knows deep down that defeating Russia, China and the rest of their adversaries will be a difficult mission, but it seems that the psychopaths in Washington and Brussels live in a fantasy land and believe they can win this coming war.
Let’s hope it don’t get that far because it would be disastrous for the entire world.
Pretty heavy stuff. It makes me think of food.
Good hearty and delicious foods, especially soups. Like a nice thick creamy soup. Maybe a cream of asparagus, or cream of broccoli. Don’t you know.
Thick cream of broccoli soup.
Ok. Let’s continue…
Dear America – You Are Delusional, and Failing at Everything You Undertake
Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Russia sanctions – “All of these harebrained schemes, hatched in Washington, have backfired grandly.”
“Those who have pushed for them are now reduced to just two face-saving maneuvers: blaming their political opponents; and blaming Russia. And these two maneuvers are set to backfire as well.”
This article from our archives was first published on RI in November 2017
Back in the days when I was still trying to do the corporate thing, I regularly found myself in a bit of a tight spot simply by failing to keep my mouth shut.
I seem to carry some sort of gene that makes me naturally irrepressible. I can keep my mouth shut for only so long before I have to blurt out what I really think, and in a corporate setting, where thinking isn’t really allowed, this causes no end of trouble. It didn’t matter that I often turned out to be right. It didn’t matter what I thought; it only mattered that I thought.
American involvement in the middle-eastern project is now limited to Putin’s sporadic courtesy calls to Trump, to keep him updated.
Of all the thoughts you aren’t allowed to think, perhaps the most offensive one is adequately expressed by a single short phrase: “That’s not gonna work.”
The end is near …
.
Suppose there is a meeting to unveil a great new initiative, with PowerPoint presentations complete with fancy graphics, org charts, timelines, proposed budgets, yadda-yadda, and everything is going great until this curmudgeonly Russian opens his mouth and says “That’s not gonna work.”
And when it is patiently explained to him (doing one’s best to hide one’s extreme irritation) that it absolutely has to work because Senior Management would like it to, that furthermore it is his job to make it work and that failure is not an option, he opens his mouth again and says “That’s not gonna work either.” And then it’s time to avoid acting flustered while ignoring him and to think up some face-saving excuse to adjourn the meeting early and regroup.
I lasted for as long as I did in that world because once in a while I would instead say “Sure, that’ll work, let’s do it.” And then, sure enough, it did work, the company had a banner year or two, with lots of bonuses and atta-boy (and atta-girl) certificates handed out to those not at all responsible for any of it. Flushed with victory, they, in turn, would think up more harebrained schemes for me to rain on, and the cycle would repeat.
America seems to be blissfully unaware of how it comes across to the rest of the world
.
It is probably one of the main saving graces of corporations that they do sometimes (mainly by mistake) allow some thought to leak through. The mistake in question is a staffing error in promoting those constitutionally incapable of keeping their mouths shut or shutting off their brains. Such errors create chinks in the monolithic phalanxes of corporate yes-men and yes-women.
Trump is too old to be a reformer or a revolutionary. He is of an age when men are generally mostly concerned about the quantity and consistency of their stool and how it interacts with their enlarged prostates.
The likelihood of such mistakes increases with the agony of defeat, which causes attrition among the ranks of qualified yes-sayers, creating holes that can only be plugged by promoting a few non-yes-sayers. However, this only seems to work in the smaller, hungrier corporations; the larger, better-fed ones seem to be able to avoid experiencing the agony of defeat for a very long time by moving the goal posts, outlawing any discussion of said defeat or other similar tactics. Eventually the entire organization goes over the cliff, but by then it is of no benefit to anyone to attempt to inform them of their folly.
It is much the same with governments, except here the situation is even worse. While the smaller, hungrier governments, and those blessed with a fresh institutional memory of extreme pain, do not have the luxury of lying to themselves, the larger political agglomerations—the USSR, the EU, the USA—have the ability to keep themselves completely immunized against the truth for historically significant periods of time.
The USSR clung to the fiction of great socialist progress even when it was clear to all that the cupboard was bare and there were rats gnawing through the rafters. The EU has been able to ignore the fact that its entire scheme is one of enriching Germany while impoverishing and depopulating eastern and southern Europe, neglecting the interests of the native populations throughout. And the amount of self-delusion that is still currently in effect in the USA makes it a rather large subject.
Regardless of how great the lies are and how forcefully they are defended, a moment always comes when the phalanx of truth-blocking yes-men and yes-women stops marching, turns and runs. This event results in a tremendous loss of face and confidence for all involved.
It is the crisis of confidence, more than anything else, that precipitates the going-off-a-cliff phenomenon that we could so readily observe in the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s. I have a very strong hunch that similar cliff-diving exercises are coming up for the EU and the USA.
But for the time being I am just another disembodied voice on the internet, watching from the sidelines and periodically saying the unfashionable thing, which is: “This isn’t gonna work.” However, I’ve said this a number of times over the years, on the record and more or less forcefully, and I feel vindicated most of the time.
Internationally, for example:
• Carving the Ukraine away from Russia, having it join the EU and NATO and building a NATO naval base in Crimea “wasn’t gonna work.” The Ukraine is a part of Russia, the Ukrainians are Russian, and the Ukrainian ethnic identity is a Bolshevik concoction. Look for a reversion to norm in a decade or two.
• Destroying and partitioning Syria with the help of Wahhabi extremists and foreign mercenaries supported by the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel while Russia, Iran, Turkey and China stand idly by “wasn’t gonna work”; and so it hasn’t.
• Giving Afghanistan “freedom and democracy” and turning it into a stable pro-Western regime with the help of invading NATO troops “wasn’t gonna work,” and hasn’t. Western involvement in Afghanistan can go on, but the results it can achieve are limited to further enhancing the heroin trade.
• Destroying the Russian economy using sanctions “wasn’t gonna work,” and hasn’t. The sanctions have helped Russia regroup internally and achieve a great deal of self-sufficiency in energy production and other forms of technology, in food and in numerous other sectors.
All of these harebrained schemes, hatched in Washington, have backfired grandly. Those who have pushed for them are now reduced to just two face-saving maneuvers: blaming their political opponents; and blaming Russia. And these two maneuvers are set to backfire as well.
In the meantime, the world isn’t waiting for the US to shake itself out of its stupor.
The fulcrum of American influence in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia and the petrodollar. In turn, Saudi Arabia rests on three pillars: the Saudi monarchy, Wahhabi Islam and the petrodollar. As I write this, the next king, Mohammed bin Salman, is busy hacking away at all three: robbing, imprisoning and torturing his fellow-princes, working to replace the Wahhabi clerics with moderate ones and embracing the petro-yuan instead of the now very tired petrodollar.
Not that any of these three pillars were in good shape in any case: the defeat of ISIS in Syria was a defeat for the Saudi monarchy which supported it, for the Wahhabi clerics who inspired it and, consequently, for the petrodollar as well, because Saudi Arabia was until now its greatest defender.
The new guarantors of peace in the region are Russia, Iran and Turkey, with China watching carefully in the wings. American involvement in the middle-eastern project is now limited to Putin’s sporadic courtesy calls to Trump, to keep him updated.
And so here’s my latest prediction: Trump’s goal of “making America great” “isn’t gonna work” either.
The country is so far gone that just taking the first step—of allowing the truth of its condition to leak through the media filters—will undermine public confidence to such an extent that a subsequent cliff-dive will become unavoidable. It’s a nice slogan as slogans go, but Trump is too old to be a reformer or a revolutionary. He is of an age when men are generally mostly concerned about the quantity and consistency of their stool and how it interacts with their enlarged prostates.
Perhaps he will succeed in making America great… big piles of feces, but I wouldn’t expect much more than that.
I Found this…
American insanity.
The USA is Cracking Up Just Like the USSR Did – In Fact, They Are Related
“You see, ideology is a product of intellectuals, and intellectuals tend to be idiots, … We are born equipped with MonkeyBrain 2.0 that can handle abstraction only too well but always fails when attempting to reconcile it with messy physical reality.”
“And so it would be a grave error to think that, just because communist ideology is idiotic, capitalist ideology is any less so.”
This article from our archives was first published on RI in November 2017
Today is the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution of 1917. It caused a lot of death and destruction, which I won’t go into because you can read all about it elsewhere. It also caused a great outpouring of new art, literature, architecture and culture in general, putting the previously somewhat stodgy Russia securely in the world’s avant-garde.
It also resulted in a tremendous surge of industrialization, rapidly transforming a previously mostly agrarian, though gradually industrializing nation into a global industrial powerhouse (at great human cost). But perhaps most importantly, the revolution destroyed all of the previously dominant institutions of privilege based on heredity, class and wealth and replaced them with an egalitarian social model centered on the working class.
And it demonstrated (as much through propaganda as by actual example) how this new model was more competitive: while the West wallowed in the Great Depression, the USSR surged ahead both economically and socially.
For all of its many failings, the USSR did serve as a shining city on the hill to the downtrodden millions around the world, including in the USA, fermenting rebellion, so that even there the one-percent ownership class eventually had to stop and think.
Reluctantly, they decided to stop trying to destroy organized labor movements, introduced state old-age pensions (misnamed “Social Security”) and declared a euphemistic “war on poverty.” And with that a “middle class” was created—so called because it was literally in the middle, having risen out of poverty but still safely walled off from the one-percent ownership class. But as we shall see this effect was temporary.
Eventually the USSR evaporated, as artificial, synthetic political entities often do. The reasons for this disappearing act are too numerous to mention, but one of the main ones was that the Soviet political elite turned itself into a much-hated, privileged caste, and then failed to reproduce, turning into a moribund gerontocracy.
When the old cadres finally started dying out, the new generation that came in included plenty of traitors who did their best to destroy the system and grab a piece for themselves. This effect was plain to see, but was it the root cause? When a complex system collapses, every part of it is touched to one extent or another, and it becomes impossible to say which one played the key role in precipitating the collapse.
With the USSR gone, the owners of the USA had no one to compete against and were no longer under any sort of pressure to maintain the illusion of an equitable and egalitarian society. Instead, they concentrated on two projects, one ideological, the other economic.
The ideological project involved wrecking what was left of the USSR to the greatest extent possible in order to paint a convincing picture of the horrible consequences of communism or socialism and to herd everyone toward wholeheartedly embracing unfettered capitalism. The economic project involved eviscerating the American middle class—a process that by now has largely run its course.
Since the creation of the middle class was a multigenerational project, so is its destruction. But the effects of this process on society are already plain to see: there is an overhang of still relatively well-off retirees while their children and grandchildren have greatly diminished economic and social prospects.
Meanwhile, the hastily erected scaffolding that created the appearance of egalitarianism has been knocked out. Organized labor is all but finished. Borders have been thrown open to foreign labor and cheap imports.
Entry into the middle class has been blocked through a variety of measures including the relentless dumbing down of public education, the equally relentless overpricing of higher education, the health care extortion scheme, the rationing of justice based on wealth and privilege, wealth confiscation using a succession of artificial real estate market bubbles and so on.
Overall, the former middle class is being whittled down to nothing the same way that the Chinese “coolies” were dealt with once the railroads had been built: don’t feed them much but give them plenty of opium (now being grown in Afghanistan under the watchful eye of Western troops). To sum it up: if you aren’t happy with the way things are going in the US, you have a choice.
You can of course blame Russia—for getting rid of the USSR. Or you can blame your owners—your one percent—who have owned you ever since the King of England appointed the Lords Proprietors.
Within Russia itself the commemoration of the October Revolution is no longer a public holiday. But there was a sort of commemoration held on the vast Palace Square in St. Petersburg, which I attended with my five-year-old son on my shoulders. It was his first time in a crowd of 35,000, and he was duly impressed. It was a light-and-sound extravaganza consisting of two shows which played in alternation.
On the vast semicircular facade of the General Staff building was broadcast a multimedia retrospective of the October Revolution that included the reading of historical documents (such as the abdication of Nicholas II) and works of poetry. It ended on an upbeat note—yes, many horrible events took place, but Russia is now reborn—with the General Staff’s façade painted in the Russian tricolor.
After the show, as we filtered out of the Palace Square and walked home along the Palace Embankment, my five-year-old son asked some good questions that he had formulated while watching the show. “Did a lot of people die?” (Yes.) “But Russia was then and is now?” (Yes, Russia has been around for a 1000 years and will probably be around for 1000 years more.) “Why do people have to die?” (Because otherwise we we would be full-up with useless old people and there wouldn’t be enough room for young people.) And then the obvious follow-up: “Why are we full-up with useless old people anyway?” (???) And finally: “Why do we bury dead people?” (Because they smell really bad.) “Ah…” A rather unsentimental youth, wouldn’t you say? But he was only one of the thousands of quite similar-minded ones who were in attendance that day, riding on their fathers’ shoulders or marching along. Welcome to Russia…One of the reasons why the USSR failed was because the idiocy of the ideology of Soviet communism became too painful to tolerate. In a sense, this was inevitable. You see, ideology is a product of intellectuals, and intellectuals tend to be idiots, making “intellectual idiocy” something of an oxymoron. We are born equipped with MonkeyBrain 2.0 that can handle abstraction only too well but always fails when attempting to reconcile it with messy physical reality. And so it would be a grave error to think that, just because communist ideology is idiotic, capitalist ideology is any less so.
By now most thinking people realize that capitalism has failed just has communism had. We can only hope that one day the US will do with its capitalist legacy what Russia has done with its communist one: turn it into a festive art installation that both children and adults can enjoy.
EPIC FAIL: Why Most US Weapons Systems Are Worse than Russia’s
Two reasons: complexity, and too much money
This article from our archives was first published on RI in April 2018
The F-35: Insanely expensive, its costs keep soaring – and it’s worse than Russian planes which cost 20 times less.
.
Lately we have seen some good analysis on the limits and vulnerabilities of the American military in light of events in the former Ukraine and especially Russia’s demonstrated competence in Syria.
So we have the “what” of the issue, but how about the “why”?
As a U.S. Army veteran and a longtime resident of the Beltway—including four-and-a-half years living on Crystal Drive in Arlington, Virginia, which has probably the densest concentration of “defense” contractors anywhere in America—I think I understand what is fundamentally wrong with the U.S. military-industrial complex (MIC.)
First and foremost, the MIC has long been incapable of producing durable, efficient, versatile weapons.
We don’t even have to look to the F-35 on this one.
My field experience with this piece of junk is that it runs into problems in the presence of even a small amount of sand. When enough sand gets in to the chamber and mixes with the lube oil on the bolt assembly, the grit thus formed results in up to every second round misloading.
God forbid you should brush an oiled open breach against the side of your foxhole—you are out of commission. In the absence of air or artillery support or sheer overwhelming numbers on your side, you are dead meat against anyone with a gun that functions in a sandy environment. And why? Because, as I was told in boot camp (whether it’s true or not), this thing is perfectly built to have zero fault tolerance.
Supposedly, just about every metal component in the M-16 is cast and/or machined to perfection rather than stamped. Contrast this with Russian or Chinese weapons that are said to be built like can openers to spray lead under any conditions. In other words, the M-16 is so sophisticated that it doesn’t work well.
It is now acknowledged that the M-16 with its 5.56mm rounds is insufficiently lethal beyond a couple of hundred meters, making it unsuited to long-distance firefights over open terrain (again those deserts, or perhaps shootouts between mountain ridges.)
The M-1 Abrams tank
Another great example – this can be a real dog. The engine is a gas turbine, like with an aircraft, except that it is being driven around in deserts and even sandstorms, making it extremely finicky and high-maintenance. (Would you fly your Boeing into a sandstorm?) Of course, the Abrams was designed to fight in Germany where sand is not an issue. But during the Iraq adventure, sand so tore up the turbine fans (or whatever) that over 1000 of these million-dollar “power packs” had to be removed and sent up for depot-level maintenance or refurbishment stateside.
Yes, that’s right—these things cannot even be fixed in the field. All you can do is pull them out with a crane and ship them back to the civilians at enormous expense. At the height of the Iraq adventure, around 2007, the maintenance backlog was so bad that even the national media got wind of it.
Of course, when you have the world’s reserve currency, you can afford all that and more—the entire world is paying for your wars.
But the waste and inefficiency are a fact.
The Basic Problem : Excessive Complexity
I think the problem here is that American war planners and logisticians prefer originality, complexity, and/or expense-for-the-hell-of-it over versatility and ease of use and maintenance. This is no surprise given America’s wealth and the longtime generous funding of its armed forces. After all, every military reflects its own society.
Unfortunately for Uncle Sam, what he gets is equipment that may work very well in one environment but not another.
But so much for American equipment per se. Let’s talk about Crystal Drive (a neighborhood in suburban Washington where many defense contractors have offices – edit.) —or more broadly, the MIC.
The Military Industrial Complex (MIC) is failing on a massive scale
It is clear now that the MIC cannot build anything for less than 200 percent of its original planned budget (and that’s being extremely conservative.) Nor can anything it cranks out nowadays meet performance or survivability expectations. Besides the never-ending supersonic train wreck known as the F-35, we have other boondoggle failures such as the Littoral Combat Ship, which by all accounts is less capable and more vulnerable than the 20 to 30 year-old vessels it was supposed to replace.
Or, going back a few years, we see the Army’s “Commanche” helicopter, an intended replacement for the Apache, which blew through $6.9 billion—in 1983-2004 dollars, probably over $10 billion today—before the entire program was scrapped. That’s right, over $10 billion for nothing—not one Commanche was ever delivered for permanent use to an Army operational unit!
Where did that money go, if they didn’t actually manufacture anything besides a few prototypes? Did they spend $10 billion on PowerPoint presentations?
My brain cannot even wrap around this. Can you imagine what Russia or China could do for $10 billion?
However, even that pales before the Army’s cancelled Future Combat Systems program, which burned through an estimated (no one knows exactly) $20 billion from 2003 to somewhere between 2012 and 2014 (depending on what termination milestone you go by), with almost nothing to show beyond a few prototypes, a lot of concept art, and a 29-pound toy robot made by iRobot of “Roomba” vacuum cleaner fame. In fact, I can’t think of one big new U.S. weapons system that has succeeded in the last 25 years, other than perhaps the Stryker armored car (though some have argued that point, and I just don’t know enough about it.)
As pointed out by many other observers, part of the blame lies with our political system, where MIC corporations buy politicians and then receive favors in the form of contracts, whether or not the contracts make any sense. However, I think this is not the only problem, nor even necessarily the biggest.
Fundamentally what I think we have is systemic over-complexity resulting in nothing getting done, or done well anyway.
US intelligence agencies have the same problem
This is akin to the deep systemic crisis in Uncle Sam’s intelligence agencies, where from 9/11 to the Arab Spring to Crimea to the ISIS conquest of Mosul to Russia in Syria, the word is always “we didn’t expect…” In this case, we have numerous agencies—some of them with overlapping functions—that are drowning in paperwork and garbage data (or too much data) and are almost totally useless.
As some readers will remember, it got so bad that in April 2014 the State Department released a photo collage aiming to prove that (among other things) a bearded Chechen battalion commander going by the name Hamza, who appeared in Russian TV footage of the 2008 Olympic War, was none other than the bearded, overweight Slaviansk militiaman going by the call-sign “Babai”—in other words, Russian special forces have invaded the Donbass. (The New York Times ran with this and was then oh-so-vaguely and gently reproached by its own ombudsman.)
Shouldn’t this awful joke have been prevented by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is supposed to promote info-sharing among agencies and centrally vet all claims and conclusions—especially those being trumpeted on the State Department’s website or at its briefings? Apparently not!
Bureaucratic bloat
On the other hand, what the U.S. lack-of-intelligence complex is very good at—besides hiring way too many buxom, flirty young things straight out of college and with no language skills or any experience at all (DIA and NGA, you know your ex-military managers like to beautify their offices)—is providing employment for tens of thousands of its own staff as well as tens of thousands of grotesquely-overpaid contractors, including those who build and run billion-dollar eavesdropping centers that have proven incapable of picking up anything useful, perhaps because when you try to listen to everything, you end up hearing nothing.
The lesson here is that the more offices and agencies, the more managers and political appointees who will seek to justify and expand their turf and budgets by shoveling out as much money on as many contracts as possible, as quickly as possible, in many cases even paying contractors to do little more than just sit around (sometimes at home) waiting for the next contract. (I have seen this many times in Washington.)
Then you get so big that people simply trip over each other and the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.
The US MIC worked great 50 years ago because less money and people were involved
So I think this is what’s going on not only in the intelligence apparatus, but in the MIC as a whole. We have hundreds of thousands of staff and contractors as well as military officers assigned to liaise with them, all kinds of project managers and “six-sigma black belts” and other buzzwords, juggling millions of PowerPoints across the river from Washington and throughout the country, and they can’t field a helicopter after spending $10 billion on it.
Really? How did this great country ever defeat the Japanese Empire?
Go to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington; you will see the most amazing things—e.g. generators designed to operate on the surface of the Moon, drawing electricity from the heat of plutonium decay—that were developed when there was no Crystal Drive, no Tysons Corner, etc.
Then go to the museum’s extension near Dulles airport and check out the SR-71 “Blackbird”, the fastest and highest-flying airplane ever built (this was about 50 years ago.)
How did they do it?
Although there were more men in uniform back then, the MIC itself (or should I say the Military-Industrial-Intelligence-Homeland-Insecurity-Complex (MIIHIC)) – had but a fraction of today’s civilian workforce. Luckily, most of those paper-pushing “systems integrators” and PowerPoint rangers did not exist. Blueprints were drafted with pencil and paper.
Today, Uncle Sam can’t even build a heavy rocket engine, not to mention a good helmet or ejection seat for his F-35.
No hope for change going forward
So it seems that as a technical civilization we are degenerating.
Sure, there are constant advancements in microelectronics (a.k.a. integrated circuits) and the programs they allow, but in terms of heavy engineering—of which the MIIHIC and other government initiatives like the space program were at the forefront since WWII—it seems that the U.S. is tapped out.
And you know what? Throwing more money at it is just going to make it worse.
The organizations with their budgets and their perfectly reasonable-sounding arguments for ever-greater budgets will grow, their workforces will grow, the contracting sector will grow, more shiny office buildings will go up, but the result will be an ever-increasingly-negative marginal return.
John McCain and all the other broken records in and out of the Pentagon will say we still don’t have enough funds to counter a pointless Russian invasion of parasitic, inconsequential Lithuania (currently headed by a longtime communist) or any other 1990s-era speculative wargame training scenario that somehow carried over into the public consciousness and morphed into the Greatest Threat to World Peace.
Of course, as long as the U.S. has the money to send gazillion-dollar armies and armadas against illiterate natives armed with sharp sticks and coconuts, this may not visibly threaten its hegemony. Almost any problem or mistake can be papered over with money, for a long time anyway.
But eventually, even if the money spigot does not constrict, we will get to the point where the military really can’t be used as anything more than a façade or a gunboat road-show, hoping no one calls the bluff, because the stuff just doesn’t work like it’s supposed to, or else is too vulnerable (witness the evacuation of the U.S. aircraft carrier from the Persian Gulf after Uncle Sam found out that Russia has cruise missiles with a range of at least 1500km, or the ridiculous sail-around of China’s little islands which had the sense to infringe only very slightly and briefly on that country’s imaginary territorial waters), or the natives can devise their own countermeasures.
In fact, I would say we are at that point already. Not to mention, the U.S. Army and the Department of Veterans Affairs are still so tapped-out after Iraq and Afghanistan that another major ground operation is unthinkable. (At this point, Washington is more likely to launch nukes at somebody than risk another ground war.)
So you can anticipate a lot of hand-wringing and a lot more money being thrown into the breach. That’s simply what the machine does; there is no chance to reform it, nor will the Hegemony dissipate willingly (although lately it’s done a good job of dissipating unwillingly.)
But all that money may as well be flushed down the can.
The threshold has been reached and it’s all downhill from here.
A Novice’s Guide to Drinking With Russians
If you find yourself in Russia, you will have to drink with Russians, one way or another. Follow this handy guide for advice on how to survive the experience
This article from our archives was first published on RI in October 2016
Contrary to popular belief, Russians are not alcoholics, and they do not drink just for the sake of doing so. However, Russians are happy to raise a glass to practically any occasion — a new job, a new car, Friday…but especially for a wedding.
As a rule, you have time to prepare for a bender, but sometimes trouble sneaks up on you. Say you get home from work on a Tuesday night having met a friend you had not seen for a long time in the subway. Isn’t this a significant event?
.
Always be on the alert. There will likely be times when you will have to drink on a weekday evening or in the middle of the night. And definitely on Friday. And most likely on Wednesday: because everybody in Russia knows that Wednesday is a little Friday.
Russians drink other things besides vodka. But of course they do drink vodka. You should be aware that a Russian party is structured differently from parties in other parts of the world.
First, the alcohol is usually bought by the host. This solves two problems at once: at first the guests do not have to know that they will have to drink and then they do not have to regret that they were unable to switch to something else after wine ran out because they did not bring it. The table full of drinks is for all, so drink whatever you want. Just do not overdo it.
Brush up on your knowledge of all key events in world history, religion, politics, sports and arts, and make sure to form an opinion on all current issues, whether or not they seem important to you.
First off, when drinking, Russians are sure to start a conversation about lofty matters. If you do not take part in these discussions, you will run the risk of simply falling asleep at the table – or drinking more to avoid having to talk. Secondly, such knowledge is simply useful. Do not be afraid of expressing your opinion. All conversations and disagreements that take place while drinking will not be held against you — no one will remember them in the morning.
Around 11 p.m., there is unprecedented level of activity in Moscow supermarkets and convenience stores. In Russia, there is a law that says alcoholic beverages cannot be sold later than a certain time, although the time varies. In Moscow, it is 11 p.m., while in St. Petersburg, it is 10 p.m.
Russians like to make lengthy toasts. Of course, the toast depends on the circumstances, but the more solemn and important the event, the longer the toast. It is customary to take a glass in your hand at the beginning of the speech and not lower it until the speaker has finished. You should train yourself to keep your hand raised for a long time. After the toast, you must clink your glass against the glasses of all those present at the table. If you are a single girl, keep in mind that an old Russian superstition holds that the last person you clink glasses with should be an unmarried man – then you will marry soon.
In the West, it is perfectly fine to take a drink and put a half-full glass back on the table before you take another drink. In Russia, however, you have to drink everything in the glass at once, otherwise people will think that you disagree with a person who delivered the toast — for which he likely rehearsed for a week before the event.
The toast “Na zdorovye!” or “to your health,” which foreigners for some reason consider to be the most popular and appropriate toast to make in Russia, is not used by anyone. Ever.
To really prepare for drinking with Russians, watch the classic Soviet film “The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath.” This movie is always shown on New Year’s Eve, and everyone knows it. Even if you watch it before your visit, you are likely to have to watch it again. But besides being a classic Soviet movie everyone should know and the source of 95 percent of the references made by your Russian friends, it shows clearly how not to drink — and what can happen to you if your visit to a banya with your friends goes wrong.
To drink with Russians is an art and, like any other, you will not be able to master it at once. But you will never be bored drinking with Russians, and if you can endure the first few times, you may even grow to like this process. Probably you will. And, upon returning home, you will look differently at the wildest parties thrown by your friends, thinking to yourself “That’s nothing; in Russia, they call it ‘propustit po stakanchiku’ (to grab a drink).”
A video interlude…
Rufus bartender saves a girl from getting a roofie. video 11MB
China military are motivated, well trained and use state of the art equipment. video 7MB
The BRI is about helping the Chinese people domestically. video 5MB
The US Has Become Too Big, Too Diverse, and Too Corrupt to Survive
“Foreign malcontents can never be successfully integrated into a civilized society because they don’t even intend to try; they intend to conquer their host instead. … we have a much harder row to hoe than Old Europe because our own “invaders” are well entrenched and have been for decades, all the way up to the highest levels of government.”
This article from our archives was first published on RI in October 2018
We’re getting close to the end now. Can you feel it? I do.
It’s in the news, on the streets, and in your face every day. You can’t tune it out anymore, even if you wanted to.
Where once there was civil debate in the court of public opinion, we now have censorship, monopoly, screaming, insults, demonization, and, finally, the use of force to silence the opposition. There is no turning back now. The political extremes are going to war, and you will be dragged into it even if you consider yourself apolitical.
There are great pivot points in history, and we’ve arrived at one. The United States, ruptured by a thousand grievance groups, torn by shadowy agencies drunk on a gross excess of power, robbed blind by oligarchs and their treasonous henchmen and decimated by frivolous wars of choice, has finally come to a point where the end begins in earnest.
The center isn’t holding… indeed, finding a center is no longer even conceivable. We are the schizophrenic nation, bound by no societal norms, constrained by no religion, with no shared sense of history, myth, language, art, philosophy, music, or culture, rushing toward an uncertain future fueled by nothing more than easy money, hubris, and sheer momentum.
There comes a time when hard choices must be made…when it is no longer possible to remain aloof or amused, because the barbarians have arrived at the gate. Indeed, they are here now, and they often look a whole lot like deracinated, conflicted, yet bellicose fellow Americans, certain of only one thing, and that is that they possess “rights”, even though they could scarcely form an intelligible sentence explaining exactly what those rights secure or how they came into being.
But that isn’t necessary, from their point of view, you see. All they need is a “voice” and membership in an approved victim class to enrich themselves at someone else’s expense. If you are thinking to yourself right now that this does not describe you, then guess what? The joke’s on you, and you are going to be expected to pay the bill…that “someone else” is you.
In reality, though, who can blame the minions, when the elites have their hand in the till as well? In fact, they are even more hostile to reasoned discourse than Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, or Antifa. Witness the complete meltdown of the privileged classes when President Trump mildly suggested that perhaps our “intelligence community” isn’t to be trusted, which is after all a fairly sober assessment when one considers the track record of the CIA, FBI, NSA, BATF, and the other assorted Stasi agencies.
Burning cop cars or bum-rushing the odd Trump supporter seems kind of tame in comparison to the weeping and gnashing of teeth when that hoary old MIC “intelligence” vampire was dragged screaming into the light. Yet Trump did not drive a stake into its heart, nor at this point likely can anyone…and that is exactly the point. We are now Thelma and Louise writ large.
We are on cruise control, happily speeding towards the cliff, and few seem to notice that our not so distant future involves bankruptcy, totalitarianism, and/or nuclear annihilation. Even though most of us couldn’t identify the band, we nonetheless surely live the lyrics of the Grass Roots: “Live for today, and don’t worry about tomorrow.”
The “Defense” Department, “Homeland” Security, big pharma, big oil, big education, civil rights groups, blacks, Indians, Jews, the Deep State, government workers, labor unions, Neocons, Populists, fundamentalist Christians, atheists, pro life and pro death advocates, environmentalists, lawyers, homosexuals, women, Millenials, Baby Boomers, blue collar/white collar, illegal aliens…the list goes on and on, but the point is that the conflicting agendas of these disparate groups have been irreconcilable for some time.
The difference today is that we are de facto at war with each other, and whether it is a war of words or of actual combat doesn’t matter at the moment. What matters is that we no longer communicate, and when that happens it is easy to demonize the other side. Violence is never far behind ignorance.
I am writing this from the bar at the Intercontinental Hotel in Vienna, Austria. I have seen with my own eyes the inundation of Europe with an influx of hostile aliens bent on the destruction of Old Christendom, yet I have some hope for the eastern European countries because they have finally recognized the threat and are working to neutralize it.
Foreign malcontents can never be successfully integrated into a civilized society because they don’t even intend to try; they intend to conquer their host instead. Yet even though our own discontents are domestic for the most part, we have a much harder row to hoe than Old Europe because our own “invaders” are well entrenched and have been for decades, all the way up to the highest levels of government.
That there are signs Austria is finally waking up is a good thing, but it serves to illustrate the folly of expecting the hostile cultures within our own country to get along with each other without rupturing the republic. Indeed, that republic died long ago, and it has been replaced by a metastasizing mass of amorphous humanity called the American Empire, and it is at war with itself and consuming itself from within.
Long ago, we once knew that as American citizens each of us had a great responsibility. We were expected to work hard, play fair, do unto others as we would have them do unto us, and serve our country when called upon to do so. Today, we don’t speak of duty, except in so much as a slogan to promote war, but we certainly do speak of benefits for ourselves and our “group” of entitled peeps. We will fail because of our greed and avarice.
The United States of Empire has become quite simply too big, too diverse, and too “exceptional” to survive.
Video Interlude…
Rufus saves a lost little girl and reunites her with her parents. video 6MB
Western democracies are ONLY for rich people and corporations. They have and provide very little benefit to the work man, or the citizenry. That’s just the way things are. video 4MB
AMERICA: A Gigantic Clown Car Being Driven Into a Ditch
“This homework assignment should be given to the Democratic members of congress, since they are otherwise preoccupied only with hunting for Russian gremlins and discovering new sexual abnormalities to protect and defend.”
This article from our archives was first published on RI in September 2017
Poor old Karl Marx, tortured by boils and phantoms, was right about one thing: History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. Thus, I give you the Roman Empire and now the United States of America. Rome surrendered to time and entropy. Our method is to drive a gigantic clown car into a ditch.
Is anyone out there interested in redemption? I have an idea for the political party out of power, the Democrats, sunk in its special Okefenokee Swamp of identity politics and Russia paranoia: make an effort to legislate the Citizens United calamity out of existence. Who knows, a handful of Republicans may be shamed into going along with it. For those of you who have been mentally vacationing on Mars with Elon Musk, Citizens United was a Supreme Court decision — Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission 558 U.S. 310 (2010) — which determined that corporations had the right, as hypothetical “persons,” to give as much money as they liked to political candidates.
We’ve made important contributions to world culture…
.
This “right” devolved from the First Amendment of the constitution, the 5-4 majority opinion said — giving money to political candidates and causes amounts to “freedom of speech.” The Citizens United ruling opened the door for unlimited election spending by corporations and enormous mischief in our national life. Then-President Obama — a constitutional law professor before his career in politics — complained bitterly about the opinion days later in his State of the Union address, saying that the court had “reversed a century of law to open the floodgates, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections.”
And for the next seven years he did absolutely nothing about it, nor did the Democratic Party majority in congress. Rather, they vacuumed in as much corporate campaign money as possible from every hokey political action committee (PAC) from sea to shining sea, especially in the 2016 presidential election starring Hillary “It’s My Turn” Clinton. It turned out to not be her turn in large part because the voters noticed the stench of corruption wafting off this toxic flow of corporate money, which Hillary was using to vastly outspend her billionaire opponent, troll that he was.
It’s been a heck of a ride, and it’s coming to an end …
.
Of course, corporations have not always been what they are deemed to be today. They evolved with the increasingly complex activities of industrial economies. Along the way — in Great Britain first, actually — they were deemed to exist as the equivalent of legal persons, to establish that the liabilities of the company were separate and distinct from those of its owners. In the USA, forming a corporation usually required an act of legislation until the late 19th century. After that, they merely had to register with the states. Then congress had to sort out the additional problems of giant “trusts” and holding companies (hence, anti-trust laws, now generally ignored).
In short, the definition of what a corporation is and what it has a right to do is in a pretty constant state of change as economies evolve. And insofar as the current economy is sinking like the USS Titanic — and our republic as a mode of governance with it — surely the time has come to redefine in legislation the role and existential nature of a corporation in this polity. This homework assignment should be given to the Democratic members of congress, since they are otherwise preoccupied only with hunting for Russian gremlins and discovering new sexual abnormalities to protect and defend.
The crux of the argument is that corporations cannot be said to be entirely and altogether the equivalent of persons for all legal purposes. In law, corporations have duties, obligations, and responsibilities to their shareholders first, and only after that to the public interest or the common good, and only then by pretty strict legal prescription. It may be assumed that the interests of corporations and their shareholders are in opposition to, and in conflict with, the public interest. And insofar as elections are fundamentally matters of the public interest, corporations must be prohibited from efforts to influence the outcome of elections.
That’s your assignment Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership. Get serious. Show a little initiative. Do something useful. Draw up some legislation.
Get behind something real that might make a difference in this decrepitating country.
Or get out of the way and let a new party do the job.
Videos…
Rufus rescues a girl who jumps overboard. video 6MB
Rufus rescues a man carried away by a flowing stream. video 11mb
The US Outspends Russia 10X On Military, But They Are Equals. Why?
Another brilliant essay from Orlov in which he addresses the incredible bumbling incompetence of the US in contrast to Russia’s intelligent competence – Orlov is spot on.
This article from our archives was first published on RI in May 2018
“Russia is ready to respond to any provocation, but the last thing the Russians want is another war. And that, if you like good news, is the best news you are going to hear.”
A whiff of World War III hangs in the air. In the US, Cold War 2.0 is on, and the anti-Russian rhetoric emanating from the Clinton campaign, echoed by the mass media, hearkens back to McCarthyism and the red scare. In response, many people are starting to think that Armageddon might be nigh—an all-out nuclear exchange, followed by nuclear winter and human extinction. It seems that many people in the US like to think that way. Goodness gracious!
The curtain is falling on a country in serious trouble
But, you know, this is hardly unreasonable of them. The US is spiraling down into financial, economic and political collapse, losing its standing in the world and turning into a continent-sized ghetto full of drug abuse, violence and decaying infrastructure, its population vice-ridden, poisoned with genetically modified food, morbidly obese, exploited by predatory police departments and city halls, plus a wide assortment of rackets, from medicine to education to real estate… That we know.
We also know how painful it is to realize that the US is damaged beyond repair, or to acquiesce to the fact that most of the damage is self-inflicted: the endless, useless wars, the limitless corruption of money politics, the toxic culture and gender wars, and the imperial hubris and willful ignorance that underlies it all… This level of disconnect between the expected and the observed certainly hurts, but the pain can be avoided, for a time, through mass delusion.
This sort of downward spiral does not automatically spell “Apocalypse,” but the specifics of the state cult of the US—an old-time religiosity overlaid with the secular religion of progress—are such that there can be no other options: either we are on our way up to build colonies on Mars, or we perish in a ball of flame. Since the humiliation of having to ask the Russians for permission to fly the Soyuz to the International Space Station makes the prospect of American space colonies seem dubious, it’s Plan B: balls of flame here we come!
And so, most of the recent American warmongering toward Russia can be explained by the desire to find anyone but oneself to blame for one’s unfolding demise. This is a well-understood psychological move—projecting the shadow—where one takes everything one hates but can’t admit to about oneself and projects it onto another. On a subconscious level (and, in the case of some very stupid people, even a conscious one) the Americans would like to nuke Russia until it glows, but can’t do so because Russia would nuke them right back. But the Americans can project that same desire onto Russia, and since they have to believe that they are good while Russia is evil, this makes the Armageddon scenario appear much more likely.
But this way of thinking involves a break with reality. There is exactly one nation in the world that nukes other countries, and that would be the United States. It gratuitously nuked Japan, which was ready to surrender anyway, just because it could. It prepared to nuke Russia at the start of the Cold War, but was prevented from doing so by a lack of a sufficiently large number of nuclear bombs at the time. And it attempted to render Russia defenseless against nuclear attack, abandoning the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, but has been prevented from doing so by Russia’s new weapons. These include, among others, long-range supersonic cruise missiles (Kalibr), and suborbital intercontinental missiles carrying multiple nuclear payloads capable of evasive maneuvers as they approach their targets (Sarmat). All of these new weapons are impossible to intercept using any conceivable defensive technology. At the same time, Russia has also developed its own defensive capabilities, and its latest S-500 system will effectively seal off Russia’s airspace, being able to intercept targets both close to the ground and in low Earth orbit.
In the meantime, the US has squandered a fantastic sum of money fattening up its notoriously corrupt defense establishment with various versions of “Star Wars,” but none of that money has been particularly well spent. The two installations in Europe of Aegis Ashore (completed in Romania, planned in Poland) won’t help against Kalibr missiles launched from submarines or small ships in the Pacific or the Atlantic, close to US shores, or against intercontinental missiles that can fly around them. The THAAD installation currently going into South Korea (which the locals are currently protesting by shaving their heads) won’t change the picture either.
There is exactly one nuclear aggressor nation on the planet, and it isn’t Russia. But this shouldn’t matter. In spite of American efforts to undermine it, the logic of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) remains in effect. The probability of a nuclear exchange is determined not by anyone’s policy but by the likelihood of it happening by accident. Since there is no winning strategy in a nuclear war, nobody has any reason to try to start one. Under no circumstances is the US ever going to be able to dictate its terms to Russia by threatening it with nuclear annihilation.
If a nuclear war is not in the cards, how about a conventional one? The US has been sabre-rattling by stationing troops and holding drills in the Baltics, right on Russia’s western border, installing ABM systems in Romania, Poland and South Korea, supporting anti-Russian Ukrainian Nazis, etc. All of this seems quite provocative; can it result in a war?
And what would that war look like?
Here, we have to look at how Russia has responded to previous provocations. These are all the facts that we know, and can use to predict what will happen, as opposed to purely fictional, conjectural statements unrelated to known facts.
When the US or its proxies attack an enclave of Russian citizens outside of Russia’s borders, here are the types of responses that we have been able to observe so far:
1.
The example of Georgia. During the Summer Olympics in Beijing (a traditional time of peace), the Georgian military, armed and trained by the US and Israel, invaded South Ossetia. This region was part of Georgia in name only, being mostly inhabited by Russian speakers and passport-holders. Georgian troops started shelling its capital, Tskhinval, killing some Russian peacekeeping troops stationed in the region and causing civilian casualties. In response, Russian troops rolled into Georgia, within hours completely eliminating Georgia’s war-making capability. They announced that South Ossetia was de facto no longer part of Georgia, throwing in Abkhazia (another disputed Russian enclave) for good measure, and withdrew. Georgia’s warmongering president Saakashvili was pronounced a “political corpse” and left to molder in place. Eventually he was forced to flee Georgia, where he has been declared a fugitive from justice. The US State Department recently gave him a new job, as Governor of Odessa in the Ukraine. Recently, Russian-Georgian relations have been on the mend.
2.
The example of Crimea. During the Winter Olympics in Sochi, in Russia (a traditional time of peace) there occurred an illegal, violent overthrow of the elected, constitutional government of the Ukraine, followed by the installation of a US-picked puppet administration. In response, the overwhelmingly Russian population of the autonomous region of Crimea held a referendum. Some 95% of them voted to secede from the Ukraine and to once again become part of Russia, which they had been for centuries and until very recently. The Russians then used their troops already stationed in the region under an international agreement to make sure that the results of the referendum were duly enacted. Not a single shot was fired during this perfectly peaceful exercise in direct democracy.
3.
The example of Crimea again. During the Summer Olympics in Rio (a traditional time of peace) a number of Ukrainian operatives stormed the Crimean border and were swiftly apprehended by Russia’s Federal Security Service, together with a cache of weapons and explosives. A number of them were killed in the process, along with two Russians. The survivors immediately confessed to planning to organize terrorist attacks at the ferry terminal that links Crimea with the Russian mainland and a railway station. The ringleader of the group confessed to being promised the princely sum of $140 for carrying out these attacks. All of them are very much looking forward to a warm, dry bunk and three square meals of day, care of the Russian government, which must seem like a slice of heaven compared to the violence, chaos, destitution and desolation that characterizes life in present-day Ukraine. In response, the government in Kiev protested against “Russian provocation,” and put its troops on alert to prepare against “Russian invasion.” Perhaps the next shipment of US aid to the Ukraine should include a supply of chlorpromazine or some other high-potency antipsychotic medication.
Note the constant refrain of “during the Olympics.” This is not a coincidence but is indicative of a certain American modus operandi. Yes, waging war during a traditional time of peace is both cynical and stupid. But the American motto seems to be “If we try something repeatedly and it still doesn’t work, then we just aren’t trying hard enough.” In the minds of those who plan these events, the reason they never work right can’t possibly have anything to do with it being stupid. This is known as “Level III Stupid”: stupidity so profound that it is unable to comprehend its own stupidity.
4.
The example of Donbass. After the events described in point 2 above, this populous, industrialized region, which was part of Russia until well into the 20th century and is linguistically and culturally Russian, went into political turmoil, because most of the locals wanted nothing to do with the government that had been installed in Kiev, which they saw as illegitimate. The Kiev government proceeded to make things worse, first by enacting laws infringing on the rights of Russian-speakers, then by actually attacking the region with the army, which they continue to do to this day, with three unsuccessful invasions and continuous shelling of both residential and industrial areas, in the course of which over ten thousand civilians have been murdered and many more wounded. In response, Russia assisted with establishing a local resistance movement supported by a capable military contingent formed of local volunteers. This was done by Russian volunteers, acting in an unofficial capacity, and by Russian private citizens donating money to the cause. In spite of Western hysteria over “Russian invasion” and “Russian aggression,” no evidence of it exists. Instead, the Russian government has done just three things: it refused to interfere with the work of its citizens coming to the aid of Donbass; it pursued a diplomatic strategy for resolving the conflict; and it has provided numerous convoys of humanitarian aid to the residents of Donbass. Russia’s diplomatic initiative resulted in two international agreements—Minsk I and Minsk II—which compelled both Kiev and Donbass to pursue a strategy of political resolution of the conflict through cessation of hostilities and the granting to Donbass of full autonomy. Kiev has steadfastly refused to fulfill its obligations under these agreements. The conflict is now frozen, but continuing to bleed because of Ukrainian shelling, waiting for the Ukrainian puppet government to collapse.
To complete the picture, let us include Russia’s recent military action in Syria, where it came to the defense of the embattled Syrian government and quickly demolished a large part of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh/Islamic Caliphate, along with various other terrorist organizations active in the region. The rationale for this action is that Russia saw a foreign-funded terrorist nest in Syria as a direct threat to Russia’s security. Two other notable facts here are that Russia acted in accordance with international law, having been invited by Syria’s legitimate, internationally recognized government and that the military action was scaled back as soon as it seemed possible for all of the legitimate (non-terrorist) parties to the conflict to return to the negotiating table. These three elements—using military force as a reactive security measure, scrupulous adherence to international law, and seeing military action as being in the service of diplomacy—are very important to understanding Russia’s methods and ambitions.
Turning now to US military/diplomatic adventures, we see a situation that is quite different. US military spending is responsible for over half of all federal discretionary spending, dwarfing most other vitally important sectors, such as infrastructure, public medicine and public education. It serves several objectives. Most importantly, it is a public jobs program: a way of employing people who are not employable in any actually productive capacity due to lack of intelligence, education and training. Second, it is a way for politicians and defense contractors to synergistically enrich themselves and each other at the public’s expense. Third, it is an advertising program for weapons sales, the US being the top purveyor of lethal technology in the world. Last of all, it is a way of projecting force around the world, bombing into submission any country that dares oppose Washington’s global hegemonic ambitions, often in total disregard of international law. Nowhere on this list is the actual goal of defending the US.
None of these justifications works vis-à-vis Russia. In dollar terms, the US outspends Russia on defense hands down. However, viewed in terms of purchasing parity, Russia manages to buy as much as ten times more defensive capability per unit national wealth than the US, largely negating this advantage. Also, what the US gets for its money is inferior: the Russian military gets the weapons it wants; the US military gets what the corrupt political establishment and their accomplices in the military-industrial complex want in order to enrich themselves. In terms of being an advertising campaign for weapons sales, watching Russian weaponry in action in Syria, effectively wiping out terrorists in short order through a relentless bombing campaign using scant resources, then seeing US weaponry used by the Saudis in Yemen, with much support and advice from the US, being continuously defeated by lightly armed insurgents, is unlikely to generate too many additional sales leads. Lastly, the project of maintaining US global hegemony seems to be on the rocks as well. Russia and China are now in a de facto military union. Russia’s superior weaponry, coupled with China’s almost infinitely huge infantry, make it an undefeatable combination. Russia now has a permanent air base in Syria, has made a deal with Iran to use Iranian military bases, and is in the process of prying Turkey away from NATO. As the US military, with its numerous useless bases around the world and piles of useless gadgets, turns into an international embarrassment, it remains, for the time being, a public jobs program for employing incompetents, and a rich source of graft.
In all, it is important to understand how actually circumscribed American military capabilities are. The US is very good at attacking vastly inferior adversaries. The action against Nazi Germany only succeeded because it was by then effectively defeated by the Red Army—all except for the final mop-up, which is when the US came out of its timid isolation and joined the fray. Even North Korea and Vietnam proved too tough for it, and even there its poor performance would have been much poorer were it not for the draft, which had the effect of adding non-incompetents to the ranks, but produced the unpleasant side-effect of enlisted men shooting their incompetent officers—a much underreported chapter of American military history. And now, with the addition of LGBTQ people to the ranks, the US military is on its way to becoming an international laughing stock. Previously, terms like “faggot” and “pussy” were in widespread use in the US military’s basic training. Drill sergeants used such terminology to exhort the “numb-nuts” placed in their charge to start acting like men. I wonder what words drill sergeants use now that they’ve been tasked with training those they previously referred to as “faggots” and “pussies”? The comedic potential of this nuance isn’t lost on Russia’s military men.
This comedy can continue as long as the US military continues to shy away from attacking any serious adversary, because if it did, comedy would turn to tragedy rather quickly.
If, for instance, US forces tried to attack Russian territory by lobbing missiles across the border, they would be neutralized in instantaneous retaliation by Russia’s vastly superior artillery.
If Americans or their proxies provoked Russians living outside of Russia (and there are millions of them) to the point of open rebellion, Russian volunteers, acting in an unofficial capacity and using private funds, would quickly train, outfit and arm them, creating a popular insurgency that would continue for years, if necessary, until Americans and their proxies capitulate.
If the Americans do the ultimately foolish thing and invade Russian territory, they would be kettled and annihilated, as repeatedly happened to the Ukrainian forces in Donbass.
Any attempt to attack Russia using the US aircraft carrier fleet would result in its instantaneous sinking using any of several weapons: ballistic anti-ship missiles, supercavitating torpedos or supersonic cruise missiles.
Strategic bombers, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles would be eliminated by Russia’s advanced new air defense systems.
So much for attack; but what about defense? Well it turns out that there is an entire separate dimension to engaging Russia militarily. You see, Russia lost a huge number of civilian lives while fighting off Nazi Germany. Many people, including old people, women and children, died of starvation and disease, or from German shelling, or from the abuse they suffered at the hands of German soldiers. On the other hand, Soviet military casualties were on par with those of the Germans. This incredible calamity befell Russia because it had been invaded, and it has conditioned Russian military thinking ever since. The next large-scale war, if there ever is one, will be fought on enemy territory. Thus, if the US attacks Russia, Russia will counterattack the US mainland. Keeping in mind that the US hasn’t fought a war on its own territory in over 150 years, this would come as quite a shock.
Of course, this would be done in ways that are consistent with Russian military thinking. Most importantly, the attack must be such that the possibility of triggering a nuclear exchange remains minimized. Second, the use of force would be kept to the minimum required to secure a cessation of hostilities and a return to the negotiating table on terms favorable to Russia. Third, every effort would be made to make good use of internal popular revolts to create long-lasting insurgencies, letting volunteers provide the necessary arms and training. Lastly, winning the peace is just as important as winning the war, and every effort would be made to inform the American public that what they are experiencing is just retribution for certain illegal acts. From a diplomatic perspective, it would be much more tidy to treat the problem of war criminals running the US as an internal, American political problem, to be solved by Americans themselves, with an absolute minimum of outside help. This would best be accomplished through a bit of friendly, neighborly intelligence-sharing, letting all interested parties within the US know who exactly should be held responsible for these war crimes, what they and their family members look like, and where they live.
The question then is, What is the absolute minimum of military action—what I am calling “a thousand balls of fire,” named after George Bush Senior’s “a thousand points of light”—to restore peace on terms favorable to Russia? It seems to me that 1000 “balls of fire” is just about the right number. These would be smallish explosions—enough to demolish a building or an industrial installation, with almost no casualties. This last point is extremely important, because the goal is to destroy the system without actually directly hurting any of the people. It wouldn’t be anyone else’s fault if people in the US suffer because they refuse to do as their own FEMA asks them to do: stockpile a month’s worth of food and water and put together an emergency evacuation plan. In addition, given the direction in which the US is heading, getting a second passport, expatriating your savings, and getting some firearms training just in case you end up sticking around are all good ideas.
The reason it is very important for this military action to not kill anyone is this: there are some three million Russians currently residing in the US, and killing any of them is definitely not on strategy. There is an even larger number of people from populous countries friendly to Russia, such as China and India, who should also remain unharmed. Thus, a strategy that would result in massive loss of life would simply not be acceptable. A much better scenario would involve producing a crisis that would quickly convince the Russians living in the US (along with all the other foreign nationals and first-generation immigrants, and quite a few of the second-generation immigrants too) that the US is no longer a good place to live. Then all of these people could be repatriated—a process that would no doubt take a few years. Currently, Russia is the number three destination worldwide for people looking for a better place to live, after the US and Germany. Germany is now on the verge of open revolt against Angela Merkel’s insane pro-immigration policies. The US is not far behind, and won’t remain an attractive destination for much longer. And that leaves Russia as the number one go-to place on the whole planet. That’s a lot of pressure, even for a country that is 11 time zones wide and has plenty of everything except tropical fruit and people.
We must also keep in mind that Israel—which is, let’s face it, a US protectorate temporarily parked on Palestinian land—wouldn’t last long without massive US support. Fully a third of Israeli population happens to be Russian. The moment Project Israel starts looking defunct, most of these Russian Jews, clever people that they are, will no doubt decide to stage an exodus and go right back to Russia, as is their right. This will create quite a headache for Russia’s Federal Migration Service, because it will have to sift through them all, letting in all the normal Russian Jews while keeping out the Zionist zealots, the war criminals and the ultra-religious nutcases. This will also take considerable time.
But actions that risk major loss of life also turn out to be entirely unnecessary, because an effective alternative strategy is available: destroy key pieces of government and corporate infrastructure, then fold your arms and wait for the other side to crawl back to the negotiating table waving a white rag. You see, there are just a few magic ingredients that allow the US to continue to exist as a stable, developed country capable of projecting military force overseas. They are: the electric grid; the financial system; the interstate highway system; rail and ocean freight; the airlines; and oil and gas pipelines. Disable all of the above, and it’s pretty much game over. How many “balls of flame” would that take? Probably well under a thousand.
Disabling the electric grid is almost ridiculously easy, because the system is very highly integrated and interdependent, consisting of just three sub-grids, called “interconnects”: western, eastern and Texas. The most vulnerable parts of the system are the Large Power Transformers (LPTs) which step up voltages to millions of volts for transmission, and step them down again for distribution. These units are big as houses, custom-built, cost millions of dollars and a few years to replace, and are mostly manufactured outside the US. Also, along with the rest of the infrastructure in the US, most of them are quite old and prone to failure. There are several thousand of these key pieces of equipment, but because the electric grid in the US is working at close to capacity, with several critical choke points, it would be completely disabled if even a handful of the particularly strategic LPTs were destroyed. In the US, any extended power outage in any of the larger urban centers automatically triggers large-scale looting and mayhem. Some estimate that just a two week long outage would push the situation to a point of no return, where the damage would become too extensive to ever be repaired.
Disabling the financial system is likewise relatively trivial. There are just a few choke points, including the Federal Reserve, a few major banks, debit and credit card company data centers, etc. They can be disabled using a variety of methods, such as a cruise missile strike, a cyberattack, electric supply disruption or even civil unrest. It bears noting that the financial system in the US is rigged to blow even without foreign intervention. The combination of runaway debt, a gigantic bond bubble, the Federal Reserve trapped into ever-lower interest rates, underfunded pensions and other obligations, hugely overpriced real estate and a ridiculously frothy stock market will eventually detonate it from the inside.
A few more surgical strikes can take out the oil and gas pipelines, import terminals, highway bridges and tunnels, railroads and airlines. A few months without access to money and financial services, electricity, gasoline, diesel, natural gas, air transport or imported spare parts needed to repair the damage should be enough to force the US to capitulate. If it makes any efforts to restore any of these services, an additional strike or two would quickly negate them.
The number of “balls of flame” can be optimized by taking advantage of destructive synergies: a GPS jammer deployed near the site of an attack can prevent responders from navigating to it; taking out a supply depot together with the facility it serves, coupled with transportation system disruptions, can delay repairs by many months; a simple bomb threat can immobilize a transportation hub, making it a sitting duck instead of a large number of moving targets; etc.
You may think that executing such a fine-tuned attack would require a great deal of intelligence, which would be difficult to gather, but this is not the case. First, a great deal of tactically useful information is constantly being leaked by insiders, who often consider themselves “patriots.” Second, what hasn’t been leaked can be hacked, because of the pitiable state of cybersecurity in the US. Remember, Russia is where anti-virus software is made—and a few of the viruses too. The National Security Agency was recently hacked, and its crown jewels stolen; if it can be hacked, what about all those whose security it supposedly protects?
You might also think that the US, if attacked in this manner, could effectively retaliate in kind, but this scenario is rather difficult to imagine. Many Russians don’t find English too difficult, are generally familiar with the US through exposure to US media, and the specialists among them, especially those who have studied or taught at universities in the US, can navigate their field of expertise in the US almost as easily as in Russia. Most Americans, on the other hand, can barely find Russia on a map, can’t get past the Cyrillic alphabet and find Russian utterly incomprehensible.
Also consider that Russia’s defense establishment is mainly focused on… defense. Offending people in foreign lands is not generally seen as strategically important. “A hundred friends is better than a hundred rubles” is a popular saying. And so Russia manages to be friends with India and Pakistan at the same time, and with China and Vietnam. In the Middle East, it maintains cordial relations with Turkey, Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt and Iran, also all at the same time. Russian diplomats are required to keep channels of communication open with friends and adversaries alike, at all times. Yes, being inexplicably adversarial toward Russia can be excruciatingly painful, but you can make it stop any time! All it takes is a phone call.
Add to this the fact that the vicissitudes of Russian history have conditioned Russia’s population to expect the worst, and simply deal with it. “They can’t kill us all!” is another favorite saying. If Americans manage to make them suffer, the Russian people would no doubt find great solace in the fact they are making the Americans suffer even worse, and many among them would think that this achievement, in itself, is already a victory. Nor will they remain without help; it is no accident that Russia’s Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, previously ran the Emergencies Ministry, and his performance at his job there won him much adulation and praise. In short, if attacked, the Russians will simply take their lumps—as they always have—and then go on to conquer and win, as they always have.
It doesn’t help matters that most of what little Americans have been told about Russia by their political leaders and mass media is almost entirely wrong. They keep hearing about Putin and the “Russian bear,” and so they are probably imagining Russia to be a vast wasteland where Vladimir Putin keeps company with a chess-playing, internet server-hacking, nuclear physicist, rocket scientist, Ebola vaccine-inventing, polyglot, polymath bear. Bears are wonderful, Russians love bears, but let’s not overstate things. Yes, Russian bears can ride bicycles and are sometimes even good with children, but they are still just wild animals and/or pets (many Russians can’t draw that distinction). And so when the Americans growl about the “Russian bear,” the Russians wonder, Which one?
In short, Russia is to most Americans a mystery wrapped in an enigma, and there simply isn’t a large enough pool of intelligent Americans with good knowledge of Russia to draw upon, whereas to many Russians the US is an open book. As far as the actual American “intelligence” and “security” services, they are all bloated bureaucratic boondoggles mired in political opportunism and groupthink that excel at just two things: unquestioningly following idiotic procedures, and creatively fitting the facts to the politics du jour. “Proving” that Iraq has “weapons of mass destruction”—no problem! Telling Islamist terrorists apart from elderly midwestern grandmothers at an airport security checkpoint—no can do!
Russia will not resort to military measures against the US unless sorely provoked. Time and patience are on Russia’s side. With each passing year, the US grows weaker and loses friends and allies, while Russia grows stronger and gains friends and allies. The US, with its political dysfunction, runaway debt, decaying infrastructure and spreading civil unrest, is a dead nation walking. It will take time for each of the United States to neatly demolish themselves into their own footprints, like those three New York skyscrapers did on 9/11 (WTC #1, #2 and #7) but Russia is very patient. Russia is ready to respond to any provocation, but the last thing the Russians want is another war. And that, if you like good news, is the best news you are going to hear. But if you still think that there is going to be a war with Russia, don’t think “Armageddon”; think “a thousand balls of flame,” and then—crickets!
Passerbyon December 29, 2021 · at 4:42 pm EST/EDT
The German army has it’s first trans officer, Anastasia Biefang, who is on record as saying “I love being taken in dark rooms”.
In 2014 the Belgian army discarded its Leopard tanks, as a cost saving measure.
I interpret this as: the West has been busy creating an army that corresponds to a political vision, not to military requirements.
And when I look at the Russian proposals, I don’t get an impression of an ultimatum. Rather, the impression is one of “checkmate”: the West can move any piece it wants, they are all losing moves.
Video…
A service-to-self sentience shows his real self and behaviors. video 2MB
China has developed mobile laser weapon based on Dongfeng EQ2050 4×4 tactical vehicle
According to a picture published on the Twitter account of @sugar_wsnbn on December 28, 2021, the Defense Industry of China has developed a mobile laser weapon system based on a modified Dongfeng EQ2050 nicknamed Mengshi, 4×4 light tactical vehicle.
Citing a U.S. Government report, China’s energy laser weapons program has a breadth and intensity that should greatly concern American and Allied defense planners. Some Chinese military experts expect that energy weapons will become more prevalent in 10 to 20 years and will dominate the battlefield in 30 years.
At the edition 2014 of Zhuhai Airshow, the China Academy of Engineering Physics displayed its “Low-Level Guard-1,” a 10-kilowatt electric-powered fiber optic laser. This fixed device consisted of a power module and an equipment module housing the laser and optical guidance/tracking systems. This apparently became the basis for the 30 kilowatts Low-Altitude Laser Defending System (LASS) first displayed by the Poly arms marketing company at a September 2016 military exhibit in South Africa. It claims to have a 4-kilometer range at the 30-kilowatt power level and is useful mainly for defeating swarms of small plastic drones.
According to our first analysis, the original crew compartment of the Dongfeng EQ2050 4×4 light tactical vehicle has been modified with a two doors crew cabin at the front and a fully enclosed compartment located in the middle of the chassis. The laser weapon system is integrated on a turret and can be lowered inside the vehicle in road position.
According to a Chinese source, the whole system is able to track and detect drones at a maximum range of 3 km and the laser weapon will be used to destroy UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) after detection.
The Mengshi or Dongfeng EQ2050 is a Chinese-made light tactical vehicle based on the design of the American Humvee, manufactured for government use by the Dongfeng Motor Group. In 2004 a total of 57 EQ2050 vehicles were sent to the PLA for trials and evaluation. The vehicle is now in service with Bangladesh, Belarus, Central African Republic, China, Gabon, Laos, Mali, Tajikistan,, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkmenistan, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.
The Dongfeng EQ2050 is powered Cummins EQB150-20 turbocharged diesel developing 150 hp coupled to a 5-speed gearbox. The vehicle can run at a maximum road speed of 120 km with a cruising range of over 500 km.
END OF PART 3
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Hum. Do you think the title is too soft? Maybe I should tell everyone what I REALLY think, huh?
Hum.
Yeah, today, one of my comments on LinkedIN was banned and erased because it was identified as “Disinformation”. I guess that I am now a “source of disinformation”. I’m bad news, you all.
Sigh.
I said that China was beautiful and that the skies are pretty much blue all the time, and that the pollution problem is pretty much going away.
I guess that this first-hand OPINION of mine is classified as “disinformation” and thus I lose my First Amendment Rights because the Tech Oligarchy says that Rights no longer apply to citizens using their platform.
Well, I can see and understand moderation of comments. I do it, don’t you know. No insults. No stuff about the Jews-Jews-Jews. No stuff about how great and exceptional the USA is. No stuff about how everything is going to change when Candidate XXXXX replaces President YYYYY in the United States.
But that’s just me.
But don’t call an opinion something else. Say what it is.
It is a comment that disagrees with the opinions of the owner of the website. Period. That’s all. Speak your mind. Look people in the eye (or in the cam) and speak your peace.
Sigh.
Hey! Does anyone still believe that America is free?
Banning speech is NOT FREEDOM. It’s something else. So why should the United States exist at all, if it does not represent what it says it represents? Why not call it as it actually is; A military dictatorship disguised as an oligarchy that operates a miltiary empire and is served by serf / slaves controlled by electronic means and fear.
This is all so silly. It makes me yearn for a simpler time….
A simpler time.
Simpler.
Well, maybe not THAT simple.
Maybe simpler like this…
A far simpler time.
Oh Baby!
Yeah. The age of big rail, and comfort. I love those ashtrays in the observation car. I can easily see myself drinking a cocktail, maybe a whiskey sour, and reading a newspaper. Perhaps checking out the prices on Stetson hats.
A cute dame besides me. Smelling like spring flowers, and wearing an lovely hat. Maybe a perfumed hankerchief with her phone number in red lipstick…
An Easier time…
A time when geeks were just regular (if shunned) people, not psychopathic megalomaniacs.
A time when geeks were just regular (if shunned) people, not psychopathic megalomaniacs.
A Nicer time…
…when women had a greater variety of color choices to select from. When women wore bigger earrings. When women would put their hair up when they went out, but put their hair down when they were behind closed doors…
Now, don’t they just look nice?
I like that everyone is holding a cocktail. I’ll bet the men-folk became used car salesmen, eh?
A Pleasanter time. A time when things were peaceful and easy going. Like Petticoat Junction, the Walton’s, or Mayberry RFD…
Cast of Petticoat Junction. There’s uncle Joe there. He almost served as a role model for me.
Oh, by the way, it’s easy to see why I had such a crush on the girls, don’t you know. Thin and trim. Lovely. Sweet, and kind. Nice eyes and great lips.
They were so fine…
The girls were lovely, don’t you know.
One was a red head. One was a blonde, and the other was a brunette. They really covered all the bases in that family. I wonder the true story of their fathers. As I recall, it was never brought up.
It was a Cheaper time…
Twenty five cent fries at Burger Shef.
More comfortable.
I get a distinctive Peter Frampton vibe from this picture…
I get a distinctive Peter Frampton vibe from this picture.
A Happier time. No one is going to tell you what you can do, or say, or think. No one is going to get into your face for smoking a pipe, or having a beer…
A long-lost freedom.
It was our generation that made all the big and nasty weapons that the lunitic government leadership so proudly threatens the rest of the world with. We all should have jsut stayed one, gone fishing and smoked weed in joints.
And Safer… too.
A safer time.
Yes, I do miss all that. And sometimes, I feel that I was born just a half a decade too late. It’s an odd feeling…
This car’s a beaut, eh? Too bad I haven’t a clue as to what it is. (I do love the awnings over the windows in the house in the background.)
I missed out in this by just a few years.
Well, let’s jump back to reality.
The world seems to be going down the drain. It’s not. It just seems to be because all the United States is collapsing at all levels. Have you seen the boarded up downtowns in the cities, the mob riots in the malls and shopping areas, the police shoot-outs and gun downs, and of course the train swarms where gangs of pack urban society strip a train completely bare?
I would just add that to think that the Russian winter can prevent the Russian military from fighting is simply breathtakingly stupid. However, since The Telegraph can post such nonsense, this goes to show that the general public in the West has also been stupidified beyond rescue and can be fed any bullcrap without batting an eye.
While the leaders of the (already dead) Empire are consulting meteorologists (or even astrologists?), they are completely missing the basic reality of modern warfare. These seem to be especially unaware of three basic facts:
Modern warfare is primarily conducted with long range, standoff, weapons and this makes maneuver by fire far more important than maneuver by forces.
Modern warfare places a huge importance on integrated air defenses working together under automated battle management systems. Modern air defense missiles can shoot down targets several hundred of kilometers away. No western air defense system can stop hypersonic weapons.
Modern warfare is primarily non-linear, that is to say that it is more like soccer than like US football: each player (say a battalion tactical group) “follows/opposes” another player rather than trying to hold a line and defend territory.
Those who think that Putin is preparing a WWII style attack simply don’t understand modern warfare at all.
I want to conclude with two small notes:
Strategic vs operational/tactical mobility
The US can very quickly deploy a military force pretty much anywhere on the planet were modern air defenses are absent. This means that in terms of strategic mobility, the USA remains the leader in the deployment of a light force very far away from home.
Russian mobile forces are much much heavier than their US counterparts. A Russian Airborne Division is fully mechanized, and comes with its own artillery, armor, EW, etc.. This weight makes it impossible for the Russian to use, say, IL-76s or An-124s to deploy such an Airborne Division (or brigade or even battalion) somewhere in faraway African or Latin America. However, by this sacrifice of strategy mobility Russia achieves a operational/tactical mobility which US/NATO countries can only dream of. Simply put, Russia does not have the means to deploy a full infantry battalion somewhere in distant Paraguay, but she does have the means to transport a major Airborne Force (up to several divisions) anywhere inside Russia (this especially applies to forces designated as the “reserve of the commander in chief”) or, very roughly, within about 1000km from the Russian border. Once landed, that force will not only have a firepower mobile western forces can’t even begin to hope to acquire one day, they can also quickly relocate being, as I mentioned, totally mechanized (the move of the Rusbat from Bosnia to Pristina is a good illustration of this type of capability).
All of the above is to show how utterly stupid all the discussions about Russian forces being 100, 200 or even 400km away from the Ukie border. If needed, Russia could easily move a very large force (again, fully mechanized) to the Ukie border or even into the Nazi-controlled Ukraine. I do NOT believe that they have such plans (as Russia has much better options) but Russia definitely has the possibility to very quickly augment the 100k soldiers allegedly currently within 400km of the Ukie border.
Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, etc.
I hear a lot of speculations about Russian missiles (or forces) being deployed “Cuban Missile Crisis” -style to either Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua or other friendly nations in Latin America. I would never say never (Putin loves to surprise), but in my opinion other than a reopening of the Russian intel basis in Lourdes, Russia will not actually deploy missiles in any of those countries. There are a couple of reasons for that:
Russia has no need to move her missiles anywhere because she now has the means to strike at the entire continental United States with a wide array of long range standoff weapons.
These countries are all unstable to some degree, and the issue of protecting advanced Russian weapons systems (or forces) from possible political turmoil is a headache nobody in Russia needs.
Deploying weapon systems of forces in a sovereign country require close consultations and negotiations with the host country (including a so-called SOFA). Why go through these headaches we Russian can act unilaterally without consulting with anybody?
Finally, not only can Russia threaten the continental United States without involving any third country, Russia can threaten US interests were they are the most vulnerable: abroad (especially in CENTCOM and in Far East Asia and Pacific region). Personally, I very much hope to see some truly major Russian weapon systems deliveries to both Iran and China. That being said, assisting Latin American counties like Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Chile or any other country struggling for its sovereignty would be a very good idea. Cuba would especially benefit from modern Russian air defenses and EW capabilities.
For the time being, let’s hear more about “sanctions from hell” and even “personal sanctions against Putin” or how the Russian tanks cannot deal with snow (or mud) in the exact same location where the USSR defeated the united Europe under Hitler in WWII or, before that, the united Europe under Napoleon.
Frankly, it appears to me that the 3B+PU crazies have totally taken over the Empire, and history shows how well that ends every time these “geniuses” and “hyenas” get involved in international politics.
And, finally, I really hope that Russia manages to finally protect the LDNR from the Ukronazis but WITHOUT any direct military intervention in the Ukraine (I have no problems with deniable, indirect, efforts to assist the LDNR). Such a non-invasion would be the ultimate AngloZionist nightmare and I sure hope they get it!
Andrei
Conclusion
Well, it’s being run by idiots. That’s not your problem though. Their idiocy is running through everything. But you can use a filter to control the flow of bullshit in your life.
Do so.
Aim and strive to re-manifest the joys of life that have been bleached away from you over the last few decades. Strive to get them back.
Start small. Add affirmations. Concentrate on the pleasant memories that matter to you.
Whether dancing at the beach…
Dancing at the beach.
Driving a “real” car again…
Driving a real car again.
Having a family “sit down” dinner at the table, as a daily event… a very big THING. It’s very, very fundamental to having a good, happy and calm life.
According to Jill Castle, RD and founder of The Nourished Child, research about family meals concludes that they play an important role in children's growth, development and health. "Not only do kids who eat meals with their families eat healthier, they are more likely to get good grades, have higher self-esteem and lower rates of mental health concerns," she tells PEOPLE.
It can be challenging for any family to make time together as a unit, yet alone to do it on a consistent basis, but it’s these experiences that create a strong bond among family members, especially when children are involved.
"They are a huge help in modeling routines and behavior to our kids, for exposing them to a wide variety of food that we want them to eat, and for reconnecting after periods of being apart," Amy Palanjian, creator of Yummytoddlerfood.com and author of Busy Little Hands: Food Play! Activities for Preschoolers, explains to PEOPLE.
"It's not always possible for everyone in a family to eat together due to schedules, and sometimes an adult may not be ready for a meal at the same time as a child and they may choose to have something like a glass of wine and a small snack while their child eats.
"It's the focus, conversation, and sitting down together without distractions that really matter—and it's okay if that looks different from a 'family meal,' " Palanjian adds.
Experts talk to us about the significance of these family meal experiences, for both parents and children, and how effective they can be no matter how 'traditional' they are or aren't.
-People
Family sit down meal at the table.
Eating a meal with loved ones and freinds is the FIRST MOST IMPORTANT step in generating a safe, and calm environment for you and your loved ones. It is critical.
Oh, and by the way. Always remember…
You can have the last beer. You can have the last slice of pizza. You can’t have both.
Or having a fun picnic with friends and family. Drinking wine. Eating fresh bread and cheese. Enjoying the day and nature…
Having a fun picnic with friends and family.
Maybe eating some vintage food made by your grandparents. Dig out that old recipe book.
Dig it out.
Dust it off.
Decompile your grandmothers script writing…
Here is a loaf of Italian bread with an Italian seasoned meat loaf concoction, baked in an oven in aluminum foil and covered in melted cheese.
Yum.
No one makes thes things any longer. I guess it’s just too easy to go and eat at “Olive Garden” instead.
A wonderful concoction.
Vintage dinner recipe: Savory supper on a bread slice – Horseradish and tomato version
Look at these ingredients! OMG. Yum!
Ingredients
2/3 cup (small can) undiluted evaporated milk
1-1/2 pounds ground beef
1/2 cup cracker meal
1 egg
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 tablespoon prepared horseradish
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1 teaspoon Morton salt
3/4 teaspoon Ajinomoto (MSG)
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
2 cups (8 ounces) grated process-type American cheese
3 7-inch loaves French bread
Heavy-duty aluminum foil
2 medium-sized tomatoes (each cut in 6 wedges)
12 strips of cheese for garnish
Directions
Combine first twelve ingredients. Cut bread loaves in half lengthwise. Spread meat mixture evenly over cut surface of each half. Wrap heavy-duty aluminum foil around crust side of bread, leaving top uncovered. Place on cookie sheet.
Bake in moderate oven (350 degrees) 25-30 minutes. Garnish with tomato wedges and strips of cheese. Bake 5 minutes longer. To serve, cut slices across or diagonally.
Serves 6 (Or two hungry American men.)
…
Or, you know… being a Rufus. Change your life for the better.
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
In the first part, we concluded with an article how the Chinese decapitated the CIA and NED assets inside of China. China identified who the spies were, captured them and executed them immediately. This occurred when President Trump and Mike Pompeo / John Bolton were trying to start a pro-democracy movement in HK, unleash bio-weapons to kill livestock, and try to coordinate saboteurs inside the Chinese mainland.
Here we continue.
But before we do, I would like to say that nothing is better on a long cold day than a hot bowl of soup that has been cooking all afternoon. Especially when it is served with a nice crunchy bread. Don’t you think so? I love the smells and aromas of a good pot of soup or a hearty stew.
A hearty stew.
Ok, let’s continue.
Let’s remember what America actually is today… Everyone in the world believes it is a cluster fuck
Face the facts, the United States is a cluster fuck, and it is pure idiocy to believe that it can act as a unified force to take on Asia. It’s truly mind-boggling. video 2.4MB
Let’s remember who really won the “Korean War” . video 6MB
The United States is in a state of crisis. video 2MB
A comment…
Yes.
Idiocrateson December 29, 2021 · at 3:37 pm EST/EDT
For me its more than a feeling. The US has a proven track record of not being able to negotiate. Their posture has been to ‘appear’ mad, insane to scare the enemy into submission. Its human nature: a normal person is usually afraid of a madman and what he might do.
However, now, the US not only appears to be insane, they ARE insane, after practicing it for so long.
Another point is that I think it is not enough for Russia to neutralize Ukraine, to remove it as a source of insecurity.
Without clear and present danger to the US homeland, without a serious and unambiguous threat to Uncle Shmuels digs all Russian action will be meaningless. The yanks don't give 2 shits about anyone i.e EU, Ukraine and even Israel (yes moneybags notwithstanding).
If Russian does not scare the Dejesus out of normal and decent Americans, none of the ruling elites will get the message.
Clearly time for words has passed.
Dear American ‘Liberals’: Everything You Think You Know About Russia Is Wrong
Russia is actually ahead of the United States on many issues championed by the American Left
This article from our archives was first published on RI in June 2015
We all know what it feels like to log onto the Newsweek-owned Daily Beast, or the puerile random listicle generator known as Buzzfeed, and peruse the invective-laden anti-Russian, anti-Putin screeds contained therein. These hysterical publications serve a function; that function is to convince members of the American public who might balk at militarism that today’s Russia is a dangerous, dirty, backward, evil place, and its leader is some amalgamation of Dr. Evil and Emperor Palpatine.
Unlike during the lead-up to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, where the left took the lead in opposing the Bush administration’s reckless Middle East policy, American liberals have more or less given Obama a free hand in his dealings with Russia and the Evil Putin. Liberals opposed the Iraq War, and spent many an hour arguing with Bushies about the errors of his foreign policy. It just so happens that these individuals turned out to be right, but their insistence on facts, logic, and commitment to the truth have gone out the proverbial window when it comes to Russia and Ukraine. “Putin is just like Stalin,” my earnest, well-educated, liberal friends tell me. “His next target is Moldova and he hates gay people and Pussy Riot and now he wants to use prison labor to build the World Cup venues and he hates all women and doesn’t support women’s rights. I don’t understand why you are so pro-Russian.” I am pro-Russian because I can tell the difference between right and wrong. I can also realize when a country and a leader are being demonized to further an American geopolitical agenda. Furthermore, I can see that the more the United States tries to create some philosophical difference between the U.S. and Russia as existed during the Cold War, the more the former opens itself up to critique.
I guess it comes as no surprise when the U.S. mainstream media spends pages of copy wringing its hands over the deaths of con artists like Boris Nemtsov, but can’t find a smidgen of space to tell the story of innocent victims like Vanya – who suffered horrific injuries as the result of Kiev’s “anti-terrorist operation.” I would like to point out to the well-meaning urban hipsters who may be reading this that they are siding with people like John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and are being duped into supporting a neo-conservative war agenda. American liberals may not be on the same page with Vladimir Putin on many issues, which is great for them, because American liberals are not required to live in Russia. However, it must be pointed out that, in many ways, Russia is actually ahead of the United States on issues that tend to be dear to liberals’ hearts. Due to the constant deluge of invective on Russia’s “backward” slide, when I am aware of the precise extent and stench of America’s dirty laundry, these sanctimonious moral lectures from Americans on “human rights” don’t exactly gel with me.
Capital Punishment
Rather than getting its panties in a twist about a piece of legislation that a foreign country has merely proposed, perhaps the NYT would prefer it if Russia followed America’s lead and started executing its prisoners instead of asking them to repay their debt to society. Capital punishment in Russia has been indefinitely suspended – in contrast to the U.S.’s busy death chambers. Since 1976, the U.S. has executed 1,408 individuals. Thus far in 2015, 14 prisoners have been executed. Texas and Oklahoma alone are responsible for 637 executions. Even for those who support capital punishment, it cannot be denied that America’s death chambers have likely put innocent people to death. By contrast, when Russia entered the Council of Europe in 1996, Boris Yeltsin bumbled his way into abolishing the practice.
Capital punishment has not been reinstated under the administrations of Dmitri Medvedev or Vladimir Putin. In 2008, the UN took a vote on passing a moratorium on the death penalty. Russia was one of the 106 nations that voted in favor; the U.S was among the 46 that voted against. Despite the objections of countries such as the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Iran, the measure was approved. Not only does the U.S. far outpace Russia in use of the death penalty, America executes individuals who would not be eligible for the death penalty in Russia. Women, children, and the mentally disabled are exempt from capital punishment. The last person executed in Russia was Sergey Golovkin, a convicted serial killer. In fact, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has spoken out against the death penalty.
Rates of Incarceration
Perhaps the Russians do not need to clear out their prisons through the use of a barbaric and outdated punishment simply because they don’t have as many individuals in prison. Think Progress reports that the U.S. has the largest prison population in the developed world. Additionally, minority American men are more likely than their white counterparts to land in prison.
According to this chart, the incarceration rate in Russia lands somewhere between the U.S. states of Washington and Utah. You read that correctly. The entirety of the Russian Federation has a smaller percentage of its population in prison than the state of Washington. Washington has approximately 7 million residents; Russia has 143 million people. While Russia, China, and the United States overall have the highest prison rates per 100,000 people, the United States has 707; Russia has 470; and China has somewhere between 124 and 172. I wonder when I will see the New York Times gleefully trumpeting this fact as part of a smug commentary on the U.S.’s backward slide.
I also wonder how many World Cup venues could be built with just the population of the Louisiana penal system.
Recognition of Palestine
According to a Gallup poll, Democrats are slowly withdrawing their support for Israel. The left-wing Slate writes of the importance of Palestinian independence. Slate’s Josh Keating mentions naughty Russia in passing because they are unlikely to recognize Kosovo, but neglects to tell its readership that the Soviet Union voted to acknowledge Palestine in 1988. It’s safe to say that this is a cause for concern for many Western liberals, as the Guardian became rather worked up over the firing of an American professor because of his pro-Palestinian stance.
Gun Control
In spite of The New Republic’s dire warnings about drunken redneck Russians shooting anyone who looks at them cross-eyed, even with the new regulations, Russian gun laws are still considered to be restrictive. Even a cursory glance at Russia’s gun policy would make many GOP voters explode with rage.
Russia places limits on the types and number of firearms citizens can own – a very significant distinction from America’s “anything goes” gun policies. Possession of shotguns and other firearms is regulated by law, and gun owners must provide documentation and a “statement from a territorial police officer that weapons can be safely kept at the applicant’s residence” to their local police department.
Russian gun owners must also obtain a gun license. Gun licenses are valid for five years and have to be renewed. Russia also does not allow the controversial practice of open carry, which most American liberals oppose. Additionally, the Russian government requires that citizens who acquire a gun for the first time not only attend firearm safety classes and pass a federal safety exam, but they must also pass a background check. Sensible gun legislation. What a backward sewer!
Of course, perhaps I am being too hard on the United States. Russia doesn’t have the National Rifle Association buying off every politician from dog catcher to members of Congress.
While abortion has been legal in the U.S. since Roe v. Wade, individual states have passed legislation placing limits on abortion. While legislators in the Russian Duma have proposed a bill that would limit access to abortion, the proposal seeks to limit state insurance payments for abortions. This is still more generous than American abortion practices, where no public money goes to pay for abortions. As of right now, abortions are available to women over the age of 16 up to the 12th week of pregnancy. No Russian woman seeking an abortion under her government’s health plan is required to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound.
Health care continues to be a contentious issue in the U.S. Although Obamacare has lowered the percentage of uninsured adults, there are still 42 million Americans without health care. Russia, like many developed nations around the world, has universal health coverage. No, it is not perfect. Most systems like Russia’s face problems such as coverage gaps and budget shortfalls, but it is a system that Russia has had in place since Soviet times, and is a guarantee that it gives to all of its citizens. Also, did I mention there is free abortion?
Admittedly, I do not know much about the Russian health care system. They are protesting their right to hang onto their Soviet-style health care system. Although the Western media gleefullyreported that Russians protested cuts in health care due to sanctions and low oil prices, I am pretty certain that citizens taking to the streets to express their displeasure with their government’s policy is a sign of a healthy democracy. Furthermore, taking sick pleasure in other people having a hard time because you don’t happen to like their leader isn’t what I would call progressive. It also doesn’t make America’s health care system any better.
The Down & Dirty
Since Russia will hopefully still be hosting the World Cup in 2018, it’s safe to assume that the Western press will continue to beat the same very dead horses they banged on about during Sochi – gay rights and Pussy Riot – because these issues take precedence over the humanitarian tragedy occurring right now in Ukraine.
Let me take my American liberal friends on a little tour, and show them why the focus on these issues is actually war propaganda. It’s very cleverly disguised war propaganda, but war propaganda nonetheless.
Gay Rights
Americans are exceptional. We know that. They are exceptionally specious when it comes to the issue of the LGBT community in Russia.
During the lead-up to the Sochi Olympics, we heard day after day after day how the “gay propaganda” law in Russia would soon lead to gay people being rounded up in cattle cars and shipped off to concentration camps in Siberia. The blame for all of this was laid at the feet of one Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, who calmly and rationally explains his views on the subject here. Despite the fact that Putin actually does not hate gay people, the Western press forged ahead painting a picture of a Russia where homosexuals are “hunted” with the full support of the Russian public and its demonic leader. In fact, when Russia jailed anti-gay nationalist Maxim Martinskovich for his crimes, it wasn’t good enough for the Daily Beast and CNN tried to take the credit, even though Martinskovich had been on the Russian government’s radar for a while and had actually been jailed in 2007. CNN even tried to claim that before his arrest, Putin was refusing to arrest Martinskovich, conveniently leaving out the fact that Martinskovich had fled to Cuba.
One doesn’t have to agree with Putin’s views on the subject, nor do they have to be particularly supportive of Russia in general to see that it is being singled out and demonized
for a policy that was passed through a democratic process. To my knowledge, the U.S. has never changed a domestic policy simply because a foreign press was whining about how unfair it was, so I am uncertain why Russia is expected to do so.
Pussy Riot
You guys cannot be serious with this. How is walking into a church, interrupting a service, going into a sacred area of said church, dancing around like five-year-olds, and scaring a bunch of little old Russian ladies brave? Or a protest? Seriously? I am all for freedom of speech and freedom of expression, but if they wanted to protest Putin I am sure they could have found a service that he actually attended. Even then, I am doubtful that he would have cared. I am not religious myself, but I believe there is such a thing as freedom of religion, and people have a right to worship in peace.
Pussy Riot calls itself a “feminist punk band.” First of all, there is nothing feminist about Pussy Riot. They are grown women in their mid-20s who don’t mind men twice their age referring to them as “girls.” Western Feminism 101 will tell you that calling grown woman a girl is degrading. Secondly, there is nothing “punk” about them. Punk is about being real, and challenging the status quo. If Pussy Riot is about being real, why did they change their name from the Russian “Bойна” to the English “Pussy Riot”? Perhaps because their intended audience is actually outside Russia?
Then there is the matter of their chosen venue. The original Cathedral of Christ the Savior was demolished by Joseph Stalin in 1931 and was rebuilt only after the fall of the Soviet Union. Considering that this church symbolizes the utter hatred of religion that was par for the course during Soviet times, it is little wonder that today’s Russians were so offended. Not only does the church have symbolic value, but the Romanovs were canonized there in 2000. It is where Yeltsin lay in state after he finally keeled over from heart failure in 2007. What exactly made them this angry that they chose this church for their protest? Were they murdered for their beliefs by Stalin? Were they shot and bayoneted to death for being the daughter of a tsar? Is this challenging status quo? Protesting in a cathedral that is charged with the weight of sad chapters in Russia’s history? Is that challenging the status quo, or being an insensitive brat?
American liberals like to pretend this “song” was about Putin. There are only a couple of lines in the song that actually refer to Putin and the Patriarch. Most Western media claims they were arrested for “hooliganism” when they were charged with hooliganism motivated by religious hatred. Read that last part very carefully. The rest is about how backward they think the Orthodox church is. That’s fine if they feel that way, but I am pretty sure there is no law in Russia that demands that you join.
Americans were outraged! How dare they? How dare they what? Employ their own laws? Prosecute crimes and hand out punishment i in a manner in which they see fit? And what if this had happened in the United States? You’re telling me that the country that lost its damn mind when Miley Cyrus gesticulated with a foam finger at the”sacred” VMAs would have looked the other way if someone protested in this manner at the National Cathedral in D.C. or the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC? How about you go to Boston and interrupt Sunday mass at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross? I’m sure everyone would have been totally calm. Just like everyone stayed calm when Seth MacFarlane had a potty mouth at the”solemn” Academy Awards. Or how like nobody cared when someone spray painted graffiti at a national park.
I suppose I am not an arbiter of what is and what is not acceptable speech, and what is and is not a challenge to the status quo. But I do know that, had Pussy Riot not been little white girls, maybe the American media would have called them thugs.
I know Russia isn’t perfect, and that’s not the point. But whatever issues Russia has, I feel it is always better to let a country sort these sorts of things out for themselves. Take it from me, the U.S. has plenty of problems of its own. If anything, Russia should take the U.S.’s constant nagging as a compliment. After all, this is the same country that called Nelson Mandela a terrorist.
The United States talks all the time about winning “hearts and minds.” Through the sheer preponderance of facts in their favor, Russia has won my mind. I have freely given it my heart.
A video interlude…
Life in America 1. To understand the entire picture, you have to see the ENTIRE picture, and it is not pretty. video 9MB
Life in America 2. The American government has failed it’s citizenry. It’s all one big pile of shit. video 8MB
Life in America 3. Crime is rampant and it’s every man for himself. video 1MB
China Will Overtake the US In the Course of the Next Ten Years: Max Parry
The US is faced with a long list of hot-spots and tensions. Beginning with the situation in Iraq, where the Parliament has asked the US troops to leave. However, the US has refused a withdrawal, and instead has announced the 2,500 soldiers will be kept on the ground, but in a support mission, not combat.
The tensions between the US and Russia are at the boiling point as Washington threatens, but President Putin replies, “We didn’t come to the US or UK borders, no, they came to ours,” he said recently.Presidents of the US and China held a virtual meeting, but did not make headway in resolving lingering US-China trade war disputes. Trump started a trade war in 2018 which has resulted in both nations paying higher taxes to bring in goods from the opposing country.The US and other western powers have been meeting with Iranian officials concerning renewal of the Iran nuclear deal cancelled by Trump. Iran says the removal of sanctions is a fundamental priority, and it is not clear if the US will accept those terms.Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse interviewed Max Parry to gain some insight into these situations which are headlines in the international news.Max Parry is an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst based in New York. His writing has appeared widely in alternative media, including the Center for Research on Globalization, the Unz Review, Dissident Voice, and the Greanville Post where he serves as an associate editor. He frequently appears as a political commentator for Sputnik News and Press TV.
1. Steven Sahiounie (SS): The US military is pulling out of Iraq. In your opinion, is the Iraqi military capable of preventing an ISIS resurgence?
Max Parry (MP): First of all, the timetable for the expected drawdown of coalition troops from Iraq is still up in the air. Until now apparently, the resolution passed by the Iraqi parliament following the Soleimani assassination was completely disregarded by Washington.
Initially, the ostensible reason for the protracted reentry of foreign forces in the country was to combat Daesh (editor’s note ISIS) and that pretext for the US-led combat mission expired nearly four years ago, yet coalition forces still remain. Given the historical precedent set by American foreign policy, part of me tends to agree with the pessimistic fears that the announcement by senior US and Iraqi officials of the transition to an “advisory role” is likely just another cosmetic facelift for a continued U.S. occupation. While to some extent I am cynical that Washington has any real intention of withdrawing, the recent developments in Afghanistan arguably marked a turning point for waning US influence in the region so perhaps it is a real pullout of boots on the ground in Iraq after all.
I would note that the resurgence of Daesh, which had been mostly eliminated at the hands of the Iraqi PMU in the areas under its control unlike the former caliphate territory under U.S. occupation, began shortly after the inauguration of Joe Biden earlier this year. It also seems like whenever there is any inkling the US is going to leave the country, an ISIS terrorist attack conveniently occurs (never against the US bases though curiously) and gives the perfect excuse for Washington to remain.
Meanwhile, the U.S. frequently serves as the air force on behalf of the remnants of Daesh by targeting the PMU even as they are fighting ISIS across the border in Syria. At the end of the day, the U.S. uses Daesh as a strategic asset in the region to dominate countries like Iraq and the only hope for ISIS to be eliminated lies with the PMU, not al-Kadhimi and the Iraqi government which essentially allowed the U.S. to murder Soleimani and al-Muhandis on its territory and continuously provokes the Popular Mobilization Forces.
2. SS: The US/EU political pressure on Russia is increasing. In your opinion, how will Moscow react to this pressure?
MP: The source of the tensions between the US/EU and Moscow is the absence of a security guarantee rightfully demanded by the latter from the West, Ukraine and NATO which are leaving Russia with little choice but to take a hard line against their provocations. It is Washington which has continuously withdrawn from arms reduction treaties and NATO that has enlarged eastward despite informal pledges not to expand made to the Kremlin at the end of the Cold War. Russia has no choice but to interpret this encirclement and unfriendly course of action as hostile.
I think we could see in Ukraine what we saw in Georgia back in 2008, one of the shortest conflicts in the history of warfare, where US and Israeli-backed Georgia provoked Russia by shelling civilians in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. I believe the same kind of war crimes could occur in Donbass with Ukraine provoking Russia by escalating the conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk. After all, the Russian troop buildup on its border was triggered by Ukrainian President Zelensky’s decree stating Kiev’s intentions to retake Crimea from Russia and Donbass from the Russian-speaking separatists. I do not believe NATO is suicidal enough to directly attack Russia but I do see a potential hot war brewing between Ukraine and Russia with the West using Kiev as a cat’s paw for imperialism against Moscow.
3. SS: The Biden administration is in an economic war with China. How will this economic tension reflect on the world economy?
MP: Fundamentally, if you take a close look at Biden’s Built Back Better initiative and legislation, on a geopolitical level it is basically a counter to China’s Belt and Road infrastructure project.
For example, its framework weaponizes the issue of climate change as means to single out China and the New Silk Roads to be punished by economic warfare, namely in the form of sanctions. The U.S. geostrategy is clearly dead set on containing China’s infrastructure development and investment of the global south. Meanwhile, at the G7, the World Economic Forum, and these other Western financial institutions we’ve seen them adopt this “Build Back Better” slogan in coordinated unison for the so-called “Great Reset” or Fourth Industrial Revolution, as some call it, in the wake of the pandemic.
We can see how the US-China trade war is playing out in the realm of big tech, with the success of TikTok and U.S. attempts to designate it a threat to national security. Not to mention, there were the sanctions on Huawei. This is because China is on pace to overtake the U.S. as the preeminent country in the world not just economically but geopolitically in the next ten years and this conflict is taking shape in every aspect of the world economy. The U.S. is desperate to halt the rise of Beijing in the global arena because while it has depleted trillions from the Treasury on endless wars and wasteful military spending, domestically it has been de-industrialized and outsourced virtually all of its manufacturing overseas since the 1970s. We are truly witnessing the emergence of a multipolar world and I believe these efforts by the U.S. to keep pace with China were not made soon enough to make any difference.
4. SS: Will the Zionist Lobby in the US be successful in preventing a new nuclear deal with Iran?
MP: I don’t believe the United States is committed to a return to the JCPOA under Biden. Iran has made it abundantly clear the U.S. must lift all sanctions imposed since 2018 after the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew from the agreement. Biden has been in office nearly a year and has had ample time to make good on his campaign pledge, the ball has been in his court. Instead, we’ve only seen Washington demand further concessions from Iran regarding ballistic missiles, for example, if the agreement is to be re-implemented.
The Zionist lobby tried to sabotage the non-proliferation framework from being adopted and was instrumental in Trump’s move to kill the deal in total violation of international law. While AIPAC’s powerful influence over Washington obviously remains under the Democrats, Biden seems more concerned with using the abandonment of the JCPOA as a political football to score points against Trump and the GOP rather than follow through on returning to what was considered a foreign policy victory under Obama. I foresee a crisis coming to a head between the US and Israel which has become a pariah and total PR disaster for the U.S. where the tide of public opinion domestically is starting to turn against the Zionist entity. That said, I think we are still some ways away from any South Africa-like moment for the Palestinians, unfortunately.
5. SS: Is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project operational? How is this affecting the relationship between Russia and the EU?
MP: Construction of the pipeline was completed but it is not yet operational, awaiting certification from Germany’s energy regulator. This has huge implications for EU-Russia relations and for the Ukraine crisis, as Ukraine is a transit country economically reliant on gas transit feeds the new pipeline would bypass. The US would also be impacted because its economic foothold in Europe would be reduced. In the midst of this, the EU and US are accusing Russia of using the pipeline and its supply of natural gas to Europe to its advantage. These factors are all behind what is driving the crisis in Ukraine and the NATO provocations in the Black Sea against Russia.
Video Interlude…
American homeless. This is NORMAL inside of America. video 8MB
American homeless 2. This is NORMAL inside of America. video 6MB
American homeless 3. This is NORMAL inside of America. video 7MB
Empires Fall. Now It’s America’s Turn, and Russia Will Make It Happen
Russia is allowing the US to overextend before the cauldron collapses around it
This article from our archives was first published on RI in June 2018
It’s important for bullies to always win. Because once their weakness is exposed they can no longer be bullies.
Empires don’t start out as bullies. They start out as the reaction to the last Empire which became a bully after embracing hubris over humility.
Empires have to resort to bullying near the end because they are fundamentally weak. They all over-extend themselves through currency debasement which, in turn, degrades the cultural advantage the society had over the previous Empire.
Donald Trump knows how to bully with the best of them. I go back and forth about his status as a bully, however. He is a mercurial figure whose unpredictability is predictable.
I see him more as Loki than the typical bully. In other words, it’s probably fair to say that to Trump bullying is just another tactic.
So, as the head of the U.S., an Empire in the early stages of collapse, fundamentally weakened by two generations of empire building after the failure of Bretton Woods, Trump will bully his opposition because he knows that an Empire that is not feared is one that will soon be laughed at.
And when that happens, it’s game over.
Trump understands that the U.S. can no longer afford to pay for the post-WWII institutional order. Europe’s been rebuilt but the EU is in the process of tearing it down for the sake of globalism.
And Germany is the one benefiting on our dime.
So, if you are opposed to the Empire, regardless of your politics, seeing Trump take it to the G-7 and, in particular, Germany should be welcomed.
Where you should be worried however, is how that same bullying is being turned on Russia and Iran. In my latest article for Strategic Culture Foundation I remind everyone that none other than Mr. Realpolitik, Henry Kissinger, was advising Trump on Ukraine and Crimea in early 2017.
And after looking at the way Trump is prosecuting our relationship with Russia it’s clear to me now Kissinger had a stronger influence on Trump than anyone thought.
As the Kremlin Turns
The Left still screaming about Russia collusion are themselves delusional. Trump hasn’t been secretly doing nice things for Putin behind everyone’s back. There’s no coordination of policy between them.
I spent most of 2017 arguing with MAGA folks convinced that Trump and Putin were waging a secret war on the Deep State and the Neocons. 4-D chess arguments abounded.
When the reality was that while Trump and Putin keep in touch to ensure little direct conflict between the U.S. and Russian forces in Syria takes place, that is not evidence that Trump is soft on Russia in any way.
Not provoking a nuclear-armed country is not evidence of collusion, just functional brain cells. A statement I can’t make about most of Trump’s critics this week.
This is an operating principle which governed this week’s summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as well. Trump was smart to meet with Kim, who did outmaneuver the U.S. over the past five years, by achieving nuclear-armed status.
It forced the U.S. to the table and Trump, smartly, took the opportunity to save face and choose peace.
The same thing is not on the horizon with Russia today.
The Kremlin has moved on. It would like a better relationship with Washington but it has no illusions about it happening. To Putin’s credit he has not ruled out speaking with Trump, but as Alistair Crooke points out today, there’s little good reason for him doing so.
Trump has crossed so many lines with his Kissinger-inspired policy to force Russia to abandon its relationship with China through economic and political aggression that there’s little to be gained by chatting about anything other than the weather.
Beware the Cauldron
To beat a bully you have to let him over-extend himself. He has to feel confident of your passivity in the face of his aggression. That means if you slap him in the face, he turns the other cheek.
If you attack his friends, he doesn’t attack you.
For more than a year we’ve seen these things play out around the world vis a vis Russia in Syria and in Europe. The attacks are both military, Syria and Ukraine, and financial, the Nordstream 2 pipeline.
I’ve detailed all of this at length over the past year. Putin has taken so many shots to the chin that U.S. / Russian relations bear a great resemblance to the “Rumble in the Jungle” where Mohammed Ali let George Foreman punish him for round after round, expending himself in a futile attempt to knock Ali out.
And once Foreman’s arms felt like lead and his legs like Jello, Ali struck so hard and so fast that he stunned the world.
Russian military strategy is dominated by this type of thinking. Lure your opponent in. Create a weak spot and allow him to attack it over and over. Invite the chaos. Allow him to think he is winning.
So here’s where we are today:
If Trump is successful in getting Germany to cower before his sanctions regime that will, in turn, put Iran under heavy pressure financially and socially.
That may yet lead to a formal withdrawal of IRGC Quds forces from Syria. Yet another win.
But, it will only happen if the U.S. leaves the border crossing at Al-Tanf. Small pirce to pay.
The U.S. negotiates a deal with Turkey to control Manbij, possibly to undermine Russia’s relationship with Erdogan, keeping the Turks in Syria to complicate peace talks.
Military conflict in Ukraine likely in the next few weeks with the UAF attacking the Donbass and an incident in the Sea of Azov.
This supports a failing Poroshenko government in trouble before the election and sucker Putin into direct support which can justify more sanctions and keeping the EU on board because of “Russian Aggression” and “Not supporting the Minsk process.”
Trump is openly tying sanctions and trade normalization with the Nordstream 2 pipeline in brazen mafia-style negotiating tactics further complicating Merkel’s life.
Five more Russian companies were sanctioned this week over ‘cyber attacks.’
He’s openly threatening major multinationals who do business in the U.S. for being a part of Nordstream 2.
I think you get the point. I could go on for another page or two.
Closing the Trap
The point is that this is classic bullying behavior. Trump is pot-committed, as poker-players say, to this policy.
Once you start with sanctions and threats, you can’t stop. It’s go all the way or have your bluff called. With Europe Trump holds aces. They are dependent on the U.S. and their weakness will be the U.S.’s gain over the next year or two. Europe’s sovereign debt crisis will explode and the U.S. will see massive foreign in-flows.
It’ll be a massive win but it won’t be the win. And in winning over Europe it sets him up for the big loss; the fight for the Middle East and Eurasian integration.
His gambit with Russia and Iran becoming an all-or-nothing proposition. Trump has just about pushed all-in. Russia/Iran/China’s passivity has emboldened him. The fecklessness of the Obama administration creating dumpster fires in Ukraine and Syria, however, handed him bad cards and a dwindling stack.
He hasn’t won a hand in the Middle East yet. Sure he’s made headlines but Putin, Rouhani, Nasrallah and Assad have won all the skirmishes that matter. Any wins Trump has gotten were easy ones to pick up. The framework for a deal has always been the same. And no amount of Kissinger-style complications were going to change them.
Iran no more wants to stay in Syria than Putin wants to intervene in The Donbass. So, getting Iran out of Syria is easy. All Trump has to do is leave. Israel won’t like it, but it won’t be their decision. Putin made that clear to Netanyahu when he visited Moscow.
The Kurds are the ones to make that decision for Trump, now that they are openly negotiating with Damascus after Trump backstabbed them over Manbij.
Without the support of the Kurds, the U.S. cannot stay in Syria at all.
So, when we reach the showdown hand Trump won’t have aces. And the classic Russian cauldron will collapse in around him. And losing there will be the end of the U.S. empire abroad.
And the world will rejoice.
Russia’s New Nukes Check-Mate a War-Happy US, Make the World Safer
Now that its aircraft carrier fleet, global ABM systems, and NATO has been rendered useless, the US can get on with dismantling its entire bloated, over-stretched, global network of military bases.
This article from our archives was first published on RI in March 2018
A lot of people seem to have lost the thread when it comes to nuclear weapons. They think that nuclear weapons are like other weapons, and are designed to be used in war. But this is pure mental inertia.
.
According to all the evidence available, nuclear weapons are anti-weapons, designed to prevent weapons, nuclear or otherwise, from being used. In essence, if used correctly, nuclear weapons are war suppression devices. Of course, if used incorrectly, they pose a grave risk to all life on Earth. There are other risks to all life on Earth as well, such as runaway global warming from unconstrained burning of hydrocarbons; perhaps we need to invent a weapon or two to prevent that as well.
.
Some people feel that the mere existence of nuclear weapons guarantees that they will be used as various nuclear-armed countries find themselves financially, economically and politically in extremis.
As “proof” of this, they trot out the dramaturgical principle of Chekhov’s Gun.
Anton Chekhov wrote: “Если вы говорите в первой главе, что на стене висит ружье, во второй или третьей главе оно должно непременно выстрелить. А если не будет стрелять, не должно и висеть.»” [“If you say in Act I that there is a gun hanging on the wall, then it is a must that in Act II or III it be fired. And if it won’t be fired, it shouldn’t have been hung there in the first place.”]
And if you point out that we are talking about military strategy and geopolitics, not theater, they then quote Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances…” and believe that it is QED. Now, I happen to agree wholeheartedly with Chekhov, when it comes to dramaturgy, and I agree with the Bard as well, provided we define “the world” as “the world of theater,” from which the worlds of geopolitics and nuclear physics are both dramatically different.
Let me explain it in terms that a drama major would understand. If there is a nuclear bomb hanging on the wall in Act I, then, chances are, it will still be hanging on that wall during the final curtain call. In the meantime, no matter how many other weapons are present on stage during the play, you can be sure that none of them would be used. Or maybe they will be, but then the entire audience would be dead, in which case you should definitely ask for your money back because this was billed as a family-friendly show.
Back in the real world, it is hard to argue that nukes haven’t been useful as deterrents against both conventional and nuclear war. When the Americans dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they only did this because they could do so with complete impunity. Had Japan, or an ally of Japan, possessed nuclear weapons at the time, these attacks would not have taken place. There is a considerable body of opinion that the Americans didn’t nuke Japan in order to secure a victory (the Japanese would have surrendered regardless) but to send a message to Joseph Stalin. Stalin got the message, and Soviet scientists and engineers got cracking.
There was an uncomfortable period, before the USSR successfully tested their first atomic bomb, when the Americans were seriously planning to destroy all major Soviet cities using a nuclear strike, but they set these plans aside because they calculated that they didn’t have enough nukes at the time to keep the Red Army from conquering all of Western Europe in retaliation. But in August 29, 1949, when the USSR tested its first atomic bomb, these plans were set aside—not quite permanently, it would later turn out—because even a singular nuclear detonation as a result of a Soviet response to an American first strike, wiping out, say, New York or Washington, would have been too high a price to pay for destroying Russia.
Since then—continuously except for a period between 2002 and two days ago—the ability of nuclear weapons to deter military aggression has remained unquestioned. There were some challenges along the way, but they were dealt with. The Americans saw it fit to threaten the USSR by placing nuclear missiles in Turkey; in response, the USSR placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. The Americans didn’t think that was fair, and the result was the Cuban Missile Crisis. Eventually the Americans were prevailed upon to stand down in Turkey, and the Soviets stood down in Cuba. Another threat to the deterrent power of nuclear weapons was the development of anti-ballistic weapons that could shoot down nuclear-tipped missiles (just the ballistic ones; more on that later). But this was widely recognized to be a bad thing, and a major breakthrough came in 1972, when the USA and the USSR signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Over this entire period, the principle that kept the peace was Mutual Assured Destruction: neither side would provoke the other to the point of launching a nuclear strike, because such a move was guaranteed to be suicidal. The two sides were reduced to fighting a series of proxy wars in various countries around the world, which were so much the worse for it, but there was no danger of these proxy conflicts erupting into a full-scale nuclear conflagration.
In the meantime, everybody tried to oppose nuclear proliferation, preventing more countries from obtaining access to nuclear weapons technology—with limited success. The cases where these efforts failed testify to the effective deterrent value of nuclear weapons. Saddam Hussein of Iraq didn’t have any “weapons of mass destruction” and ended up hung. Muammar Qaddafi of Libya voluntarily gave up his nuclear program, and ended up tortured to death.
But Pakistan managed to acquire nuclear weapons, and as a result its relations with its traditional nemesis India have become much more polite and cooperative, to the point that in June of 2017 both became full members of Shanghai Cooperation Organization, along with China, Russia and other Eurasian nations. And then North Korea has made some breakthroughs with regard to nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles, and as a result of that the US has been reduced to posturing and futile threats against it while South Korea has expressed some newfound respect for its northern neighbor and is now seeking rapprochement.
In 2002 the prospect of continued nuclear deterrence was set a major setback when the US pulled out of the ABM treaty. Russia protested this move, and promised an asymmetrical response. American officials ignored this protest, incorrectly thinking that Russia was finished as a nuclear power. Since then, the Americans spent prodigious amounts of money—well into the trillions of dollars—building a ballistic missile defense system. Their goal was simple: make it possible to launch a first strike on Russia, destroying much of its nuclear arsenal; then use the new American ABM systems to destroy whatever Russia does manage to launch in response. On February 2, 2018 the Americans decided that they were ready, and issued a Nuclear Posture Review in which they explicitly reserved the right to use nuclear weapons to prevent Russia from using its nuclear deterrent.
And then, two days ago, all of that came to a happy end when Vladimir Putin gave a speech in which he unveiled several new weapons systems that completely negate the value of US missile defense shield—among other things. That was the response the Russians promised to deliver when the US pulled out of the ABM treaty in 2002. Now, 16 years later, they are done. Russia has rearmed with new weapons that have rendered the ABM treaty entirely irrelevant.
The ABM treaty was about ballistic missiles—once that are propelled by rockets that boost the missile to close to escape velocity. After that the missile follows a ballistic trajectory—just like an artillery shell or a bullet. That makes its path easy to calculate and the missile easy to intercept. The US missile defense systems rely on the ability to see the missile on radar, calculate its position, direction and velocity, and to launch a missile in response in such a way that the two trajectories intersect. When they cross, the interceptor missile is detonated, knocking out the attacking missile.
None of the new Russian weapons follow ballistic trajectories. The new Sarmat is an ICBM minus the “B”—it maneuvers throughout its flight path and can fly through the atmosphere rather than popping up above it. It has a short boost phase, making it difficult to intercept after launch. It has the range to fly arbitrary paths around the planet—over the south pole, for instance—to reach any point on Earth. And it carries multiple maneuverable hypersonic nuclear-armed reentry vehicles which no existing or planned missile defense system can intercept.
Among other new weapons unveiled two days ago was a nuclear-powered cruise missile which has virtually unlimited range and goes faster than Mach 10, and a nuclear-powered drone submarine which can descend to much larger depths than any existing submarine and moves faster than any existing vessel. There was also a mobile laser cannon in the show, of which very little is known, but they are likely to come in handy when it comes to frying military satellites. All of these are based on physical principles that have never been used before. All of these have passed testing and are going into production; one of them is already being used on active combat duty in the Russian armed forces.
The Russians are now duly proud of their scientists, engineers and soldiers. Their country is safe again; Americans have been stopped in their tracks, their new Nuclear Posture now looking like a severe case of lordosis. This sort of pride is more important than it would seem. Advanced nuclear weapons systems are a bit like secondary sexual characteristics of animals: like the peacock’s tail or the deer’s antlers or the lion’s mane, they are indicative of the health and vigor of a specimen that has plenty of spare energy to expend on showy accessories.
In order to be able to field a hypersonic nuclear-powered cruise missile with unlimited range, a country has to have a healthy scientific community, lots of high-powered engineers, a highly trained professional military and a competent security establishment that can keep the whole thing secret, along with an industrial economy powerful and diverse enough to supply all of the necessary materials, processes and components with zero reliance on imports. Now that the arms race is over, this new confidence and competence can be turned to civilian purposes.
So far, the Western reaction to Putin’s speech has closely followed the illogic of dreams which Sigmund Freud explained using the following joke:
1. I never borrowed a kettle from you
2. I returned it to you unbroken
3. It was already broken when I borrowed it from you.
A more common example is a child’s excuse for not having done her homework: I lost it; my dog ate it; I didn’t know it was assigned.
In this case, Western commentators have offered us the following:
1. There are no such weapons; Putin is bluffing
2. These weapons exist but they don’t really work
3. These weapons work and this is the beginning of a new nuclear arms race
Taking these one at a time:
1. Putin is not known to bluff; he is known for doing exactly what he says he will do. He announced that Russia will deliver an asymmetric response to the US pulling out of the ABM treaty; and now it has.
2. These weapons are a continuation of developments that already existed in the USSR 30 years ago but had been mothballed until 2002. What has changed since then was the development of new materials, which make it possible to build vehicles that fly at above Mach 10, with their skin heating up to 2000ºC, and, of course, dramatic improvements in microelectronics, communications and artificial intelligence. Putin’s statement that the new weapons systems are going into production is an order: they are going into production.
3. Most of Putin’s speech wasn’t about military matters at all. It was about such things as pay increases, roads, hospitals and clinics, kindergartens, nurseries, boosting retirements, providing housing to young families, streamlining the regulation of small businesses, etc. That is the focus of the Russian government for the next six years: dramatically improving the standard of living of the population. The military problem has already been resolved, the arms race has been won, and Russia’s defense budget is being reduced, not increased.
Another line of thought in the West was that Putin unveiled these new weapons, which have been in development for 16 years at least, as part of his reelection campaign (the vote is on March 18). This is absurd. Putin is assured of victory because the vast majority of Russians approve of his leadership. The elections have been about jockeying for a second place position between the Liberal Democrats, led by the old war horse Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and the Communists, who have nominated a non-communist oligarch businessman Pavel Grudinin, who has promptly disqualified himself by failing to disclose foreign bank accounts and other improprieties and now appears to have gone into hiding. Thus, the Communists, who were previously slated for second place, have burned themselves down and Zhirinovsky will probably come in second. If Americans don’t like Putin, then they definitely wouldn’t like Zhirinovsky. Putin is practical and ambivalent about “our Western partners,” as he likes to call them. Zhirinovsky, on the other hand, is rather revenge-minded, and seems to want to inflict pain on them.
At the same time, there is now a committee, composed of very serious-looking men and women, who are charged with monitoring and thwarting American meddling in Russian politics. It seems unlikely that the CIA, the US State Department and the usual culprits will be able to get away with much in Russia. The age of color revolutions is over, and the regime change train has sailed… all the way back to Washington, where Trump stands a chance of getting dethroned Ukrainian-style.
Another way to look at the Western reaction to Russia’s new weapons is using Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s stages of grief. We already saw denial (Putin is bluffing; weapons don’t work) and the start of anger (new arms race). We should expect a bit more anger before moving on to bargaining (you can have the Ukraine if you stop building Sarmat). Once the response comes back (“You broke the Ukraine; you pay to get it fixed”) we move on to depression (“The Russians just don’t love us any more!”) and, finally, acceptance. Once the stage of acceptance is reached, here is what the Americans can usefully do in response to Russia’s new weapons systems.
First of all, Americans can scrap their ABM systems because they are now useless. Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had this to say about it: «То, что сегодня создаётся в Польше и Румынии, создаётся на Аляске и предполагается к созданию в Южной Корее и Японии — этот “зонтик” противоракетной обороны, получается, “дырявый”. И не знаю, зачем за такие деньги теперь этот “зонтик” им приобретать.» [“What is being built in Poland and Romania, and in Alaska, and is planned in South Korea and Japan—this missile defense ‘umbrella’—turns out to be riddled with holes. I don’t know why they should now buy this ‘umbrella’ for so much money.”]
Secondly, Americans can scrap their aircraft carrier fleet. All it’s useful now for now is threatening defenseless nations, but there are much cheaper ways to threaten defenseless nations. If Americans are still planning to use them to dominate sea lanes and control world trade, then the existence of hypersonic cruise missiles with unlimited range and drone submarines that can lurk at great ocean depths for years make the world’s oceans off-limits for American navy’s battle groups in the event of any major (non-nuclear) escalation because now Russia can destroy them from an arbitrary distance without putting any of their assets or personnel at risk.
Lastly, Americans can pull out of NATO, which has now been shown to be completely useless, dismantle their thousand military bases around the world, and repatriate the troops stationed there. It’s not as if, in light of these new developments, American security guarantees are going to be worth much to anyone, and America’s “allies” will be quick to realize that. As far as Russian security guarantees, there is a lot on offer: unlike the US, which is increasingly seen as a rogue state—and an ineffectual and blundering one at that—Russia has been scrupulous in adhering to its international agreements and international law. In developing and deploying its new weapons systems, Russia has not violated any international agreements, treaties or laws. And Russia has no aggressive plans towards anyone except terrorists. As Putin put it during his speech, «Мы ни на кого не собираемся нападать и что-то отнимать. У нас у самих всё есть.» [“We are not planning to attack anyone or take over anywhere. We have everything we need.”]
I hope that the US doesn’t plan to attack anyone either, because, given its recent history, this won’t work. Threatening the whole planet and forcing it to use the US dollar in international trade (and destroying countries, such as Iraq and Libya, when they refuse); running huge trade deficits with virtually the entire world and forcing reserve banks around the world to buy up US government debt; leveraging that debt to run up colossal budget deficits (now around a trillion dollars a year); and robbing the entire planet by printing money and spending it on various corrupt schemes—that, my friends, has been America’s business plan since around the 1970s. And it is unraveling before our eyes.
I have the audacity to hope that the dismantling of the American Empire will proceed as copacetically as the dismantling of the Soviet Empire did. (This is not to say that it won’t be humiliating or impoverishing, or that it won’t be accompanied by a huge increase in morbidity and mortality.) One of my greatest fears over the past decade was that Russia wouldn’t take the US and NATO seriously enough and just try to wait them out. After all, what is there to really to fear from a nation that has over a 100 trillion dollars in unfunded entitlements, that’s full of opioid addicts, with 100 million working-age people permanently out of work, with decrepit infrastructure and poisoned national politics? And as far as NATO, there is, of course, Germany, which is busy rewriting “Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles” to be gender-neutral. What are they supposed to do next? March on Moscow under a rainbow banner and hope that the Russians die laughing? Oh, and there’s also NATO’s largest Eurasian asset, Turkey, which is currently busy slaughtering America’s Kurdish assets in Northern Syria.
But simply waiting them out would have been a gamble, because in its death throes the American Empire could have lashed out in unpredictable ways. I am glad that Russia chose not to gamble with its national security. Now that the US has been safely checkmated using the new Russian weapons systems, I feel that the world is in a much better place. If you like peace, then it seems like your best option is to also like nukes—the best ones possible, ones against which no deterrent exists, and wielded by peaceful, law-abiding nations that have no evil designs on the rest of the planet.
The Russian leader, who questioned why NATO had ignored repeated Russian warnings and expanded its military infrastructure eastwards, singled out the deployment in Poland and Romania of the Aegis Ashore missile defence system. He made it clear he did not want to see the same launch MK41 systems, which Russia has long complained can be used to also launch offensive Tomahawk cruise missiles, in Ukraine.
“Creating such threats (in Ukraine) would be red lines for us. But I hope it doesn’t come to that. I hope that a sense of common sense, responsibility for both our countries and the world community will prevail,” said Putin
To make matters worse, US senators from the Republican party submitted a bill that calls for $450 million in military aid to the Ukraine with new sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 project. The bill will also label Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism” according to a December 18th report from rt.com, ‘Russia reacts to US ‘state sponsor of terrorism threat’:
On Wednesday, eight American Republican party senators submitted a bill, speculatively titled the ‘GUARD Act’, containing a range of measures designed to support Kiev. The proposed legislation would authorize an additional $450 million in military aid and impose new sanctions on Nord Stream 2, the recently constructed pipeline that will bring Russian gas to Europe through the Baltic Sea, which Ukraine and the US have strongly opposed.
The bill would also officially designate Russia as a “state sponsor of terrorism” if Moscow advances militarily on its eastern European neighbor. In recent weeks, American and Ukrainian intelligence services have accused the Kremlin of “aggressive actions” on the border with Ukraine, including troop buildup, and said they suspected a Russian invasion could be in the works
A financial partnership between China and Russia, the world’s largest energy importer and the world’s largest energy exporter, is an indispensable instrument for dethroning the petrodollar. In 2015, approximately 90% of trade between Russia and China was settled in dollars, and by 2020, dollar-denominated trade between the two Eurasian giants had almost reduced by half, with only 46% of trade in dollars. Russia has also been leading the way in cutting the share of US dollars in its foreign reserves. The mechanisms for de-dollarizing China-Russia trade are also used to end the use of the greenback with third parties – with advancements being seen in places such as Latin America, Turkey, Iran, India, etc. The US has been pumping out dollars to the entire world for decades, and at some point, the tide will change as the sea of dollars return home with increasingly diminished value
Russia and China has also been working on alternatives to the SWIFT system:
The SWIFT system for financial transactions between banks worldwide was previously the only system for international payments. This central role for SWIFT began to erode when the US used it as a political weapon. The Americans first expelled Iran and North Korea, and in 2014, Washington began threatening to expel Russia from the system as well. Over the past few weeks, the threat of using SWIFT as a weapon against Russia has intensified.
China has responded by creating CIPS and Russia developed SPFS, both being alternatives to SWIFT. Even several other European countries have banded together with an alternative to SWIFT to curb Washington’s extra-territorial jurisdiction and thus continue trading with Iran. A new China-Russia financial architecture should integrate CIPS and SPFS, and make them more available to third parties. If the US expels Russia, then the decoupling from SWIFT would intensify further
The US wants its dollar to remain king by any means necessary. One of the main reasons Washington went to war with Iraq was not only about oil, it was because Saddam Hussein had switched from selling oil in US dollars to accepting payments in Euros as retribution for US sanctions. In Libya, Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown and murdered by US-backed forces because he was creating an alternative currency which was a gold-backed African dinar to replace U.S. dollars and Euros in the African continent.
A recent press conference, the US president and liberal war hawk, Joe Biden was asked about what consequences Russia would face if they invaded Ukraine’s territory. The liberal cheerleaders for war at CNN have been reporting what US and European leaders have been up to in regards to planning harsh sanctions on Russia because it’s President, Vladimir Putin is misbehaving, therefore punishment must be served by the American empire, So how dare you Vlad for wanting to protect your country!, “the kinds of costs the US and European allies are discussing for Russia are “designed to be implemented very, very fast,” the official said, without detailing what those measures would be. “That is partly why we have chosen the measures that we are working on.” One of their actions is most likely to cut Russia off the Swift payment system since the US dollar is still the world’s reserve currency for the moment. “The Biden administration has repeatedly said there will be severe economic consequences. Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan also made clear last week there will be further US defensive military support for Ukraine as well as US support for NATO countries on the eastern flank of Russia invades Ukraine”, continued:
I’ve made it absolutely clear to President Putin,” Biden said. “If he moves on Ukraine, the economic consequences for his economy are going to be devastating. Devastating, number one. Number two, we will find it required that we’ll have to send more American and NATO troops into the Eastern Flank, the (Bucharest) 9, all those NATO countries where we have a sacred obligation to defend them against any attack by Russia. And number three, the impact of all of that on Russia and his attitude, the rest of the world, his view of Russia would change markedly. He’ll pay a terrible price
In early December, rt.com also has been documenting what’s been happening with the Ukraine’s decision to recklessly build-up its troop levels in the Donbass region which is a clear threat to Russia’s security concerns:
Ukraine has now stationed well over 100,000 troops and large quantities of hardware in the war-torn Donbass region, the Russian Foreign Ministry alleged on Wednesday morning, amid rising tensions. Speaking at a briefing on Wednesday, diplomatic spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed that “the Armed Forces of Ukraine are increasing [their] military force, pulling heavy equipment and personnel.”
“According to some reports, the number of troops… in the conflict zone already reaches 125,000 people, and this, if anyone does not know, is half of the entire composition of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” she said. Zakharova also condemned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for submitting a bill to the national parliament that would allow units from foreign armed forces to enter the country as part of multinational exercises next year. According to her, such a move directly contradicts the Minsk agreement, signed in 2014 in a bid to end the fighting between Kiev’s forces and troops loyal to two self-declared breakaway republics
What’s even more dangerous is the talk of a first-strike option with nuclear weapons against Russia by Mississippi’s high-ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Roger Wicker as reported by FOX news:
Sen. Wicker made the startling comment during an on-air interview where he was asked about the escalating situation abroad. Wicker, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that he is ruling nothing out as a potential response to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty against Russia and its leader, President Vladimir Putin. “I would not rule out American troops on the ground,” Wicker said, adding, that “We don’t rule out first-use nuclear action”
Let’s make something clear, if the US and Europe are considering a war against Russia through Ukraine, it can escalate into another nuclear standoff reminiscent of the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis.
Russia is well-prepared for an all-out war with the west because they know that the American empire will not quit until they submit to Washington’s demands. Russia is ready, they learned a long-time ago when they were the former Soviet Union during World War II when more than 27 million Russian civilians and soldiers lost their lives fighting Nazi Germany within their borders. Washington is backing Ukraine’s aggressive behavior which will bring them closer to war with Russia. Although I believe cooler heads will prevail, anything at this point in time can happen with an out of control empire worried about losing their control over the planet. The US has its back against the wall, the question is what will they do knowing that Russia and China have the military capabilities including their new hypersonic missiles that can hit the US mainland at anytime.
The US-NATO forces would not prevail on a multi-front war with Russia and China, they should have learned a lesson in Afghanistan with the Taliban who had by far, a less-developed fighting force than Russia or China but had managed to defeat US-NATO forces after 20 years of conflict. Washington and the Pentagon knows deep down that defeating Russia, China and the rest of their adversaries will be a difficult mission, but it seems that the psychopaths in Washington and Brussels live in a fantasy land and believe they can win this coming war. Let’s hope it don’t get that far because it would be disastrous for the entire world.
END OF PART 2
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
One of the things that I really love about China is the speed and convenience of everything. Facial recognition, QR scans and payments, instant thermal scans and observation, not to mention the zero fees on all financial transactions. It’s really a fiscal paradise.
By big treat is to open up wechat, scan my local supermarket for sales on wine, and then face scan to pay and in ten minutes it’s delivered to my door stop. That would NEVER happen in the USA. Never.
But I do miss some things. Don’t you know.
I will tell you all that I truly miss an original “New York Style” pizza. You just cannot get it anywhere outside of the USA. And when I read the sad, sad news that the price of a slice is going to increase, well I must tell you, it caused a dark pit to form in my stomach.
Such is change.
What’s the matter with the moronic “leadership” in Washington DC today? Can’t they “get it”? You spend like crazy and eventually you and your families are substantially devalued. Your lifestyle decreases, and the value of the cash in your wallet turns to dust. Or maybe slime. Ooozy slime.
Pizza.
What’s the matter with these morons?
New York style pizza slice.
Long time MM readers will understand about the current Geo-political situation. As of December 2021, both Russia and China has had enough of the United States efforts to start world War III, and so they laid down terms.
China was first with “red lines” which America pretty much ignored, followed by Russia which laid down ultimatums.
People (!) facts need to be stated. Russia and China would not do this unless they had a firm “check mate” on the tarmac and ready to go.
Yikes!
This article consists of a bunch of articles from China and Russia concerning the Geo-political scene. It consists of some articles dating as far back as 2017 (at the start of the Trump presidency) and includes others that are more recent.
This is part 1 of three parts.
All in all, you can plainly see that the rest of the world considers the collapsing American government to be ruled by absolute idiots that need to be “put to sleep” (which is a eutheism that means killed humanely) lest a global conflagration engulfs the world and destroys everything.
I post it here because of some insanity comments out of the United States on MM here. Somehow one or two of my articles got passed around some American Conservative websites that the comments reflected a Hal Turner, Rush Limbaugh (dead) and FOX “news” viewpoint. Totally unaware of where they are, or what this site represents. They just skim read, skim comment, and depart.
The mind control apparatus is really in full swing there. And the people are just spouting insane nonsense.
So here is what the rest of the world is saying about the USA. No “America is not back” It’s dying…
The U.S. doesn’t have diplomats any more. Their foreign policy is “steal it, kill those who resist”.
Of course there will be no negotiation.
In any meeting they will do what they do best: use many words and try to confuse whoever is in the room, all the while watching for an opportunity to steal something.
Russia knows this. I’ve got my popcorn ready.
-Patrick
But before we get to the Geo-political nonsense, let’s talk about pizza.
I mean to say, I wonder if the “leadership” of the United States, in their quest to (so called) defend “democracy” actually eating pizza. I suspect that they are way too busy having their servants cook healthy and delicious foods such as steak and caviar for them instead of eating the kinds of food that us “normal’s” eat.
I just cannot picture Blinkedin eating a Big Mac. Can you?
Here’s a homemade attempt at a New York Style pizza. ‘ll bet that the elites in Washington DC doesn’t even know what this actually is…
Well, I’ll tell you what…
These Jack-asses in the “leadership” roles inside of the “United States” are morons and are so disconnected from reality that I sincerely and truly doubt that they know the difference between a Big Mac and a Whopper. As I really doubt it. Truth this!
Big Mac
And a whopper…
Whopper
Sigh.
They are probably too busy drinking their Chardonnay and eating their escargot to worry about how their actions influence the rest of the world. Well, boys and girls, a day of reckoning is fast approaching. Don’t you all know.
Washington Prepares to Fail in Ukraine
This chapter will not end well for President Biden or Washington’s political class.
It’s an indisputable fact: Washington leads the world in self-delusion.
Washington’s political class is poised to march into a hurricane of its own making in Ukraine, a perfect storm of foreign- and defense-policy blunders likely to plunge the American people into future crises and conflicts. Having refused to acknowledge Russia’s vital strategic interest in Ukraine, Washington now wants to subject Ukraine and the NATO alliance to a dangerous and unnecessary test by confronting Russian conventional military power. In turn, Washington and its allies now face a test—one that they could have avoided but are now likely to fail. First, the facts.
The Biden administration is spending $768.2 billion for national defense. Russia spends only $42.1 billion, less than the $48 billion spent by the Republic of Korea. Yet Russian ground forces are superior in capability and striking power to the U.S. Army and Marines, even if both countries’ ground forces were able to deploy to Ukraine.
Russia’s conventional-ground-force superiority stems, in part, from the strategic advantage of fighting close to Russia. Its potency is also a reflection of President Vladimir Putin’s insistence on fundamental defense reform and reorganization. The reform process involved years of struggle to expel old generals who resisted change and install new, resolute fighting forces, composed of young, single men with a profound sense of Russian patriotism and toughness. The policy has resulted in an operationally flexible grouping of smaller capability-based Russian fighting formations, designed to ruthlessly exploit the striking power of Russia’s rocket artillery, tactical ballistic missiles, and loitering munitions.
Far to the west and behind the Polish border sits an awkward collection of U.S. Army and NATO Ground Forces that, despite decades of cooperation, are still challenged to fight effectively as one force. In the last 20 years of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, most of America’s allies seldom had anything to contribute to our efforts, save a flag and inexperienced troops who were forced to operate under political restrictions. Thus, like the U.S. Army that leads them, the allied ground forces cling to the illusion that NATO can fight future conflicts on land the way Anglo-American allies did during World War II—with large, densely packed divisions, corps, and armies. These are lucrative targets for Russian strike formations.
Additionally, institutional policies to impose diversity and inclusion on the U.S. Armed Forces at the expense of demonstrated character, competence, and intelligence, demoralize our troops. As a result, the dedication, cohesion, and pride of achievement required to sustain America’s professional fighting force have been seriously damaged.
The implications are clear: A U.S.-Russian confrontation in Eastern Ukraine could easily resemble the 1940 Anglo-French experience, with the Wehrmacht provoking a serious backlash at home. Supply-chain bottlenecks, consumer-goods inflation, and soaring energy costs could all worsen if events in Ukraine spiral out of control. As more and more Americans wake up to falling standards of living, how will they react to yet another war for suspicious aims that have absolutely nothing to do with their own vital strategic interests, and make their daily lives even harder?
Reality is sitting on Ukraine’s eastern border, not in the South China Sea or in the strait of Taiwan, and there is ostensibly nothing Washington can do about it. The questions that should concern Washington’s political class are: Will NATO survive its ignominious retreat in the face of superior Russian military power? And, why is Washington conducting policy not from strength, but from weakness—a weakness thus far disguised by the outward show of military power against weak opponents without armies, air defenses, or air forces?
Nietzsche said, “War makes the victor stupid.” After 1991, America’s senior military and political leaders found many reasons to spend enormous sums on defense, but no reason to change the way U.S. forces fight, or to devise a national military strategy tied to tangible, concrete interests and the preservation of American national power.
As John Kenneth Galbraith warned, “People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason. But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right.”
Washington’s corrupt and morally bankrupt leaders are walking into a minefield. If they embroil U.S. and allied forces in Ukraine, extraordinary discontent at home and abroad awaits them. However, like so many privileged classes before them, the Biden administration may prefer “complete destruction” rather than acknowledge that its most cherished beliefs are utter delusions. It’s safe to say that whatever happens in Ukraine, this chapter will not end well for President Biden or Washington’s political class.
Here’s a video!
America’s spending priorities are all fucked up! video 8MB
Insanity..And it is, don’t you know..
Let’s talk about reality…
While the American elite oligarchy are busy eating their fine delicious foods, indulging in fun pursuits, the rest of America suffers. Their solution? To destroy the rest of the world for personal profit. And let the American citizens waste away in what ever conditions that remain. video 3MB.
The TRUE face of America.
As a German I am not happy at all.
The MSM here is fiercely propagating the “Russia,China-bad, EU/USA/UK-good” narrative.
They employ the usual agitprop techniques: the enemy has to be personified and then demonized, the ally generalized and blessed. And thus it’s almost always Putin, and almost always the USA, the EU etc.
Other techniques include not telling full stories, of which Ukraine is the best example. There is ZERO mentioning of UKR being a de-facto Neonazi Junta.
And so on and forth.
I am actually deeply afraid that our leaders gave “simply gone insane” and believe that the usual MO will continue forever.
That is exploitation and gradual erosion of other countries to supply the locust-capitalism of the USA-dominated world. My parents believed in socialism of the GDR. It’s good that they are dead already.
-Darkmoon
Sad. So sad.
Shocking facts and statistics about how corrupt the US economy has become.
This article from our archives was first published on RI in December 2018
Vibrant competition is absolutely essential in order for a capitalist economic system to function effectively. Unfortunately, in the United States today we are witnessing the death of competition in industry after industry as the biggest corporations increasingly gobble up all of their competitors.
John D. Rockefeller famously once said that “competition is a sin”, and he was one of America’s very first oligopolists. According to Google, an oligopoly is “a state of limited competition, in which a market is shared by a small number of producers or sellers”, and that is a perfect description of the current state of affairs in many major industries. In early America, corporations were greatly limited in scope, and in most instances they were only supposed to exist temporarily. But today the largest corporations have become so huge that they literally dominate our entire society, and that is not good for any of us.
Just look at what is happening in the airline industry. When I was growing up, there were literally dozens of airlines, but now four major corporations control everything and they have been making gigantic profits…
AMERICA’S airlines used to be famous for two things: terrible service and worse finances. Today flyers still endure hidden fees, late flights, bruised knees, clapped-out fittings and sub-par food. Yet airlines now make juicy profits. Scheduled passenger airlines reported an after-tax net profit of $15.5bn in 2017, up from $14bn in 2016.What is true of the airline industry is increasingly true of America’s economy. Profits have risen in most rich countries over the past ten years but the increase has been biggest for American firms. Coupled with an increasing concentration of ownership, this means the fruits of economic growth are being monopolised.
If you don’t like how an airline is treating you, in some cases you can choose to fly with someone else next time.
But as a recent Bloomberg article pointed out, that is becoming increasingly difficult to do…
United, for example, dominates many of the country’s largest airports. In Houston, United has around a 60 percent market share, in Newark 51 percent, in Washington Dulles 43 percent, in San Francisco 38 percent and in Chicago 31 percent. This situation is even more skewed for other airlines. For example, Delta has an 80 percent market share in Atlanta. For many routes, you simply have no choice.
And of course the airline industry is far from alone. In sector after sector, economic power is becoming concentrated in just a few hands.
For a moment, I would like you to consider these numbers…
Five banks control about half of the nation’s banking assets.
Many states have health insurance markets where the top two insurers have an 80 percent to 90 percent market share. For example, in Alabama one company, Blue Cross Blue Shield, has an 84 percent market share and in Hawaii it has 65 percent market share.
When it comes to high-speed Internet access, almost all markets are local monopolies; over 75 percent of households have no choice with only one provider.
Four players control the entire U.S. beef market and have carved up the country.
After two mergers this year, three companies will control 70 percent of the world’s pesticide market and 80 percent of the U.S. corn-seed market.
I knew that things were bad, but I didn’t know that they were that bad.
Capitalism works best when competition is maximized.
In socialist systems, the government itself becomes a major player in the game, and that is never a desirable outcome. Instead, what we want is for the government to serve as a “referee” that enforces rules that encourage free and fair competition. Jonathan Tepper, the author of “The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition”, made this point very well in an excerpt from his new book…
Capitalism is a game where competitors play by rules on which everyone agrees. The government is the referee, and just as you need a referee and a set of agreed rules for a good basketball game, you need rules to promote competition in the economy.
Left to their own devices, firms will use any available means to crush their rivals. Today, the state, as referee, has not enforced rules that would increase competition, and through regulatory capture has created rules that limit competition.
Our founders were very suspicious of large concentrations of power. That is why they wanted a very limited federal government, and that is also why they put substantial restrictions on corporate entities.
When power is greatly concentrated, most of the rewards tend to flow to the very top of the pyramid, and that is precisely what we have been witnessing. The following comes from the New York Times…
Even when economic growth has been decent, as it is now, most of the bounty has flowed to the top. Median weekly earnings have grown a miserly 0.1 percent a year since 1979. The typical American family today has a lower net worththan the typical family did 20 years ago. Life expectancy, shockingly, has fallen this decade.
So what is the solution?
Well, one of the big things that we need to do is to stop crushing small business.
In America today, the rate of small business creation has been hovering near all-time lows and the percentage of Americans that are working for themselves has been hovering near all-time lows.
In order for more competition to exist, we need more competitors to enter the marketplace, but instead we have been crushing “the little guy” with mountains of regulations and deeply oppressive taxes.
And you know what?
Many of the big corporations actually like all of the red tape because they know that they can handle it much easier than their much smaller competitors can. That gives them a competitive advantage, and it creates a barrier to entry that is difficult to overcome.
When I was in school, I was taught that one of the reasons why the U.S. system was so much better than communist systems was because we had so many more choices.
But today our choices are very limited in industry after industry, and the gigantic corporate entities that dominate everything don’t really care if we like it or not.
We can do so much better than this, but in order to do so we must return to the values and principles that this nation was originally founded upon.
…
My suggestion is give the US 8 hours to evacuate Diego Garcia and then turn it to glass.
.
Two birds with one stone.Its vital for the Empire who displaced the natives and far from any population centers.
-Winston
Laurenton December 29, 2021 · at 3:20 pm EST/EDT
Too many people in the west simply can not grasp the reality of the current world and simply refuse to negociate and to find an acceptable compromise.
Western rulers greatly overestimate their strength. This wrong assessment create two main problems: firstly they think Russia China Iran are bluffing (in their minds nobody is ready to fight them because of how strong they think they are) and if they are not bluffing then they are strong enough to win in any scenario (again because of how strong they think they are).
Ukraine is saying they and the west are ready to confront Russia militarily (words from the ukrainian ambassador to the US). The EU is saying that russian proposals are unacceptable and the pentagon deployed an aircraft carrier to deter Russia. It’s laughable but the pentagon did it anyway. It’s hard to expect something rational from people so detached from reality. Just look at the energy policy in the EU. It’s a catastrophe but they implement their policy anyway no matter the consequences. Now the EU wants to simply forbid any long term gas contract with Gazprom which means things are going te become even worse soon because Gazprom can not deliver enough gas without long term contracts which means without predictability.
We are basically in the scenario I talked about a few days ago: confronting Russia to regime change or break the country with “sanctions from hell” or worse to isolate China to then to start confronting China even more with Iran somewhere in between. I think that’s how the western hardliners decided to proceed. Their plan is based on the false assumption that first Russia has a weak economy and second that Russia is bluffing. I even think that when Russia will start to act unilaterally turning on the “pain dial” instead of getting the hardliners back to their senses the hardliners will go crazy talking about “Russian threat” and “Russian aggression” and they will use that to escalate more quickly. The war propaganda from western MSM will play a key role here.
Their are only two positive news. Firstly biden and putin will have a phone call tomorrow. Maybe things are not as bad as I think they are and a reasonable compromise will be achieved. I think anyone with a rational mind supports this scenario. Secondly the new S-550 mobile strategic missile defense system seems ready for deployment much sooner than expected and the system should be capable of striking spacecraft, warheads of intercontinental ballistic missiles and hypersonic targets.
Do you know what this all reminds me of…
Yuppur.
No question about it at all. Roller Disco.
Roller Disco.
Roller Disco.
Don’t ask me why.
Is should be obvious to most aware and thinking people. Who understand Jimmy Carter and the “Russian Menace”. Roller Disco was popular during the Sunset years of the Russian Empire. Just like Tictok is popular during the Sunset Years of the American Empire.
While Civil Society and a global movement work steadfastly across dozens of fields for the abolition of nuclear weapons, planning, preparations, and rehearsals for attacks using deployed H-bombs and nuclear missiles are routine in the US military and NATO. Two years ago, the US Joint Chief of Staff published online, then quickly deleted, its thermonuclear mass destruction titled “Nuclear Operations, Joint Publication 3-72.”
Before the Joint Chiefs took it down, Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists managed to preserve a copy. The manual relies on abstractions and euphemism to depict the unthinkable. It says,
“The employment of nuclear weapons could have a significant influence on ground operations.”
Of course “employment” means detonation, and “significant influence” means searing fireballs, vaporized victims, blast and shock-wave devastation, demolished hospitals and schools, vast firestorms, and permanent radioactive contamination of water, soil, and the food chain.
The manual explains that nuclear attacks create “conditions” without describing them.
It says,
“Using nuclear weapons could create conditions for decisive results and the restoration of strategic stability.”
Then, as if US presidents had never said,
“Nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,”
the report pretends it can and should.
“[T]he use of a nuclear weapon will…create conditions that affect how commanders will prevail in conflict.”
US nuclear war practice takes place routinely with allied European militaries. “Steadfast Noon” is NATO’s code name for its annual nuclear attack practice, and Hans Kristensen reports for the Federation of American Scientists that,
“This is the exercise that practices NATO’s nuclear strike mission with the B61 … nuclear bombs the US deploys in Europe.”
Jan Merička wrote in European Security Journal News Oct. 19, 2017, that Steadfast Noon is designed
“to simulate nuclear strikes…and was conducted from the Kleine Brogel Air Base in Belgium and Büchel Air Base in Germany, where US B61 thermonuclear bombs with the force of up to 340 kilotons of TNT are stored.” (FYI: Hiroshima was incinerated with a 15 kiloton US bomb.)
To illustrate the Pentagon’s ho-hum acceptance of mass destruction, it recently opened in Omaha its new, $1.3 billion Strategic Command headquarters for supervising and targeting the nuclear arsenal, and it named the building after General Curtis LeMay, who, the Omaha World Herald reported, designed and conducted the incendiary bombing of 60 Japanese cities at the end of WWII, bombing that “incinerated entire cities” killing as many as 900,000 civilians.
General LeMay’s motto and that of Strategic Command used to be “Death from Above,” but after the war it was changed to “Peace is Our Profession.”
In Germany, readiness for attacks with nuclear weapons is maintained by the USAF 702nd Munitions Support Squadron, which tends to Germany’s 33rd Fighter-Bomber Wing at Büchel Air Force Base.
Headlines from last October’s bombing “theater” included, and …
“NATO Holds Secret Nuclear War Exercises in Germany,”
“German Air Force training for nuclear war as part of NATO;”
And from 2017,
“NATO nuclear weapons exercise unusually open”;
And in 2015,
“NATO nuclear weapons exercise Steadfast Noon in Büchel.”
While the uninitiated might be aghast, the US military plans and prepares all year round for nuclear attacks at its far-flung “Defense Nuclear Weapons School” of the Air Force Nuclear College.
According to the school’s website, one branch (of “Armageddon Academy”) is at the Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany, the largest US military base outside the country. Other branches are in New Mexico, Florida, Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Ohio. Outlines for this school’s ghoulish courses can been read online. (The site may have been altered since I first reported on it in last June.) For example, the school says boastfully that it…
“is responsible for delivering, sustaining and supporting air-delivered nuclear weapon systems for our warfighters … every day.”
Course outlines on the website include,
“Theater Nuclear Operations, a 4.5-day course that provides training for planners, support staff, targeteers, and staff nuclear planners for joint operations and targeting.
The course provides an overview of nuclear weapon design, capabilities, and effects….
Objectives: …Understand the US nuclear planning and execution process;
Understand the targeting effects of nuclear weapon employment.”
Another class is, “Integrated Munitions Effects Assessment … a five-day course that provides students … proficiency in creating target models, developing attack plans using … nuclear weapons….”
Students “will be able to import, edit, and modify target sites”, “Calculate probabilistic attacks against predefined targets; [and] develop attack plans using … nuclear weapons.…”
I am of the mind that setting the stage for nuclear attacks is both criminal and insane. Luckily, millions of people are involved in the newly invigorated movement to rid the world of such madness, via the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Read it sometime. At least you will have, unlike the American “leadership”..
Jose Garciaon December 29, 2021 · at 2:54 pm EST/EDT
I’ve seen better clown shows when I went to a PT Barnum and Bailey circus. This is beyond ridiculous. It’s more a symptom of insanity than anything else
A video interlude…
Did you all realize that throughout China, the school children are being trained on how to handle mass causalities, provide CPR and perform field triage? Yes, it is so, these are extra courses in additional to the military training that all school children get. video 36MB
The only language Americans really understand is this: to get a taste of their own medicine.
Until Americans are fearful of being bombed back to the Stone Age--just as America routinely bombs other nations around the world--the United Snakes of America will continue to do what it does best: lie, cheat, steal, exploit, bomb, invade, rape, and colonize with impunity as it has done since 1776.
Posted by: ak74 | Dec 30 2021 18:31 utc | 10
The West Resembles a Decapitated Rooster, Wings Still Flapping, Barely Flying
"Democratic elections are but a recent innovation, and a most uncertain one. For instance, during the 2016 election in the US, the establishment trotted out an entire array of craven, feckless, corrupt opportunists, and Trump knocked them all out with a feather ..."
This article from our archives was first published on RI in November 2018
When I was five and spending the summer in a small village a couple of time zones east of Moscow I witnessed the execution of a rooster. My brother and I walked over to a neighbor’s house to pick up some eggs. Just as we arrived the neighbor finally caught the rooster and chopped his head of.
The now headless rooster then put on quite an aerobatic performance that was quite amazing. After doing an unlimited takeoff he repeatedly soared and plummeted, executed several touch-and-gos (more like crash-and-goes, actually) and was undeterred by what previously would have been head-on collisions. I was by then quite familiar with the poor aerodynamic qualities of barnyard fowl and was duly impressed with the energetic and breathtakingly erratic behavior of a bird liberated from the mental straitjacket of its brain. Unfortunately, the performance only lasted for a minute or so. A word to the wise: I later learned that it is possible to prolong the show, should the need ever arise, by heating up the hatchet so as to cauterize the severed neck. More recently, I have learned that such sans-têteaerobatics are not restricted to chickens.
Figurative birds, of the mechanical variety, can exhibit something similar. A prime example is the greatest boondoggle in the history of military aviation, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. It too is liable to losing its head, in the sense of the pilot blacking out. In addition to being ridiculously expensive (over $1.5 trillion in projected project costs) and plagued with problems (only half of the built planes are considered ready for any sort of mission and there are over a thousand known defects that haven’t been fixed, including ones that make it useless for air-to-air combat or ground support) F-35 pilots often report feeling sick and there have been many incidents where they lost consciousness, probably due to oxygen starvation and circulation problems.
In response, the fatally flawed jet’s maker Lockheed Martin, whose motto seems to be “One boondoggle deserves another,” has decided to add a subsystem. Called Auto-GCAS (for Ground Collision Avoidance System), it takes over automatically if it detects the danger of ground collision and the pilot fails to respond to the alarm and take corrective action. Auto-GCAS then throttles up and directs the plane upward, pulling a maximum of five g’s. What does that do to a pilot who is already feeling sick or is unconscious? Once a safe altitude is reached, the plane levels out and Auto-GCAS shuts off. If the pilot happens to be offline for good, the process repeats until the plane runs out of fuel and crashes. I hope that you are impressed with the sheer brilliance of the plan. A show designed to impress was recently staged at an airfield in Utah, where 35 F-35s took off, one right after the other. It has not been independently verified how many of them landed. Auto-GCAS is slated to be ready for use by 2024, but Pentagon’s planners are hoping to accelerate the process.
All of this made me wonder about the general behavior to be expected of hierarchically organized, centrally controlled systems once they are deprived of their control module. Auto-GCAS is by no means the worst case. For instance, there is the Russian Perimetr system, a.k.a. Dead Hand. If it detects that the Russian military leadership has been incapacitated by a nuclear strike, it will launch an all-out nuclear attack, obliterating the aggressor. This may seem like a really bad plan, but then attacking Russia is a really bad plan too, and one bad plan deserves another.
What makes this plan bad is that it doesn’t elicit the right response. The right response is: “Oh, we see, attacking Russia is sheer suicide, so let’s not do that.” But where’s the money in not planning to attack Russia? And so instead the “One boondoggle deserves another” crew sets forth to build anti-ballistic missile systems (which don’t work) and deep underground bomb shelters stocked with years’ worth of supplies (which is gold-plating; a large shallow grave to jump into when the time comes would work just as well).
And yet as far as planning for decapitation goes, Dead Hand is state of the art. Most other large-scale centrally controlled systems are woefully unprepared for the loss of their command modules. For instance, look at finance. After the financial collapse of 2008 it quickly became obvious that nobody competent or responsible was in charge.
The “solution” was for central banks to start blowing financial bubbles by zeroing out interest rates and flooding the world with new debt. Debt that expands much faster than the economy is garbage debt, and it gave rise to various other kinds of garbage: garbage energy from shale and tar sands, garbage money in the form of cryptocurrencies, garbage real estate investment schemes, garbage corporate balance sheets bloated with debt used up in stock buybacks, a large crop of garbage oligarchs gorging themselves on all of this garbage “wealth” and much else. Things look good while all this garbage is packaged up in financial bubbles, but once they pop (and as all children know all bubbles pop eventually) everyone will end up wearing the garbage.
There are plenty of examples of political auto-decapitation as well. In the US, Trump realized that he can become president simply by insulting all of his competitors (who richly deserved such treatment) and so he did. But now the hive mind of Washington is deeply at odds with the bumblebee-mind of Trump, and neither qualifies as any sort of a head, except perhaps in a strictly symbolic sense. Things are no better in Europe. In the UK, an anti-Brexit team is in charge of negotiating Brexit, struggling to make it as anti-Brexit a Brexit as possible.
That doesn’t seem like any sort of “headedness.” In Germany, Merkel is on her way out, and her replacement has the unenviable task of hammering together a governing coalition out of parties that are too busy knocking heads with each other. The multi-headed bureaucratic hydra in Brussels is not exactly popular with anyone. What is the recourse? Emperor Macron of France, perhaps? Is Europe ready to be headed by a diacritical character? (A macron is a horizontal line you place over vowel letters to represent a long vowel: Mācron.)
There are systems that are properly headless: flocks of birds, schools of fish, communes of anarchists, etc. They are anarchically structured and individuals within them take on temporary, task-based leadership roles as the situation demands and can only expect to be obeyed in accordance with their competence in executing the tasks.
But most of the human systems we have are hierarchically structured and require to be headed by someone. Democratic elections are but a recent innovation, and a most uncertain one. For instance, during the 2016 election in the US, the establishment trotted out an entire array of craven, feckless, corrupt opportunists, and Trump knocked them all out with a feather, not because he is any sort of proper leader, but because it was so easy.
For an even more amazing example of democratic failure, look at today’s Ukraine—the most recent experiment in Western democracy. There, a constitutionally elected, though remarkably corrupt and indecisive president was violently overthrown in 2014 in a US-managed coup and replaced with an American puppet so unpopular that yesterday he was forced to introduce martial law—just in order to be able to cancel the elections scheduled in three months and to remain in office de facto.
To produce a rationale for declaring martial law he sent some small boats on a truly idiotic mission. The boats sailed into a Russian-controlled high traffic zone in the Black Sea, refused to respond when hailed and then pointed weapons at Russian border patrol. For this they were duly arrested and hauled off to jail, and their boats confiscated. Previously, an ongoing civil war instigated by this same president resulted in some fifty thousand casualties, but no martial law was ever deemed necessary. What’s different now? Oh, the elections, of course!
If these are the fruits of democracy, perhaps the Ukrainians should consider going back to a monarchy. Dynastic succession has worked much better and for much longer periods of time. For instance, at the time of its annexation by Russia in 1783, Crimea was ruled by Shahin Girei, a descendant of Genghis Khan who was born around 1155.
That one dynasty, spanning 628 years, ruled the largest empire that ever was. At one point it included all of China, most of Russia, Korea, Persia and India, plus many lands in between. Genghis had decreed that no part of the Mongol Empire could be ruled by anyone who wasn’t a direct descendant of his, and so it was.
The Mongol Empire ended peacefully, with Shahin Girei abdicating his throne and accepting protection from Catherine the Great. Maybe that’s the plan, then: install a Ukrainian Emperor and immediately have him abdicate his throne and accept protection from Putin the Great. Then Putin will turn the heat and the hot water back on, the armed thugs will be marched off to someplace safe for disarming and de-thugging, and the nuke plants will stop breaking down.
Since we seem to be headed (no pun intended) for unstable and disrupted times, it bears pointing out that while democracy may be very nice when everything is going along according to plan, it is not particularly resilient in the face of severe disruption. And what is the plan now—in the US, or in the EU (or what will be left of it)?
We have some truly ghastly examples of the fruits of democracy in the form of the Weimar Republic in Germany or the Interim Government between February and October of 1917 in Russia. If you don’t fancy being ruled by headless chickens, consider picking a leader using whatever ad hoc procedure that works.
The idea is to avoid any more Robespierrian Reigns of Terror, Reichstag fires or October Revolutions—because we already know what those are like.
Another video interlude…
China is not Afghanistan. Any one who thinks so is a fucking idiot. video 3.2MB
China is not Syria. Anyone who thinks so is a fucking idiot. video 4MB
I have been watching the shitshow since Kosovo, more intensely so since Libya. I did my time in the US Marines in the early to mid 1980´s (helos) and was mentored by people with trigger time since WWII in various places around the world. They served both as enlisted and as officers, in different branches of service. I can offer a few perspectives, as somebody who just watched it all pass by, without any affiliation to current people whom are official. I kind of like it that way, because I learn about what is going on through a process which seems to be natural and holisitic, cheerleadering for no one side out of hand. Overall, I want more peace and less absolutely useless violence.
The Russians: in a nutshell they are very tightly wired. Their comportment during the heavy fighting in Syria said it all. They were absolutely professional, orderly and courageous. I could not believe what I was observing upon watching footage of Russian attack helicopter pilots engaging heavily defended targets, at extremely close range, over and over again. Their officers fought and died over there while leading, with barely a whimper. There is a reason why people fear the Russian military now and it is a sound position and appreciation of them in my book. They are not playing. This is also reflected in their political leardership at this point, which is exceptionally clear eyed.
The U.S.: The officer corps is a mess, thinking it is just a career path. They never tell it straight, are almost always worried about appearances and they ability to drive ships in the 7th fleet is a good place to start with for examples of this. The personnel themselves can be formidable but, the politics has probably made that completely impossible. Political leadership, coupled with extremely poor intelligence capacity and outright conceit at the decision making level has lead to one surprize after another. Weapons development and procurement has been used as if it´s only purpose was large scale theft. The biggest problems by far are they act as if nobody has any idea what they are doing or just can´t see where the are going …….. while at the same time relying on plans and direction from people who are cowards and are not prepared to sustain a good old fashioned paper cut.
You know, backing off and picking a new direction could be good for everybody. peace can help. Punks like Gloria and Hillary and that ilk in general are dragging us into an inferno. Russia will start removing pieces from the chess board with lighting speed and very soon, if they are not heeded. The party is over, the police are on the scene, my advice is go home and give it a rest. Fix our shcools and road systems, it is much safer and beneficial.
My take, thank you for letting me post it.
-John
Another video interlude…
China is not Vietnam. Anyone who thinks it is is an idiot. video 2MB
China is not Yemen. Anyone who thinks so is an idiot. video 3.4MB
NATO Preparing for Large-scale, High-intensity Armed Conflict with Russia?
We are at a Dangerous Crossroads in the History of Humanity. Rick Rozoff provides us with a selection of excerpts from major Russian media sources pertaining to the Russia- US/NATO confrontation on Russia’s Western border with Ukraine. The objective is to inform Western readers on how the official Russian media views and analyses this ongoing crisis which could lead the World into a World War III Scenario.
The excerpts include statements by Russia’s Defense Ministry
“NATO is preparing for an armed conflict with Russia , Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin said at a briefing for military attachés and representatives of foreign embassies accredited in Moscow.
“The military construction of the bloc has been completely redirected to prepare for a large-scale, high-intensity armed conflict with Russia,” the colonel-general said.
He explained that the North Atlantic Alliance in its documents, including the military strategy of 2019, directly calls our country the main source of “threats to coalition security.”
At the same time, Fomin noted, the Rome Declaration is still in force, which states that Russia and NATO do not consider each other as adversaries. The parties confirmed this at the 2010 summit in Lisbon. [At which Dmitry Medvedev became the first and to date only Russian or Soviet head of state to participate in a NATO summit – RR]
Targeted provocations by NATO near the Russian borders are highly likely to lead to an armed conflict, the Deputy Defense Minister emphasized. As an example, he cited the attempt of the British destroyer Defender in June of this year to penetrate the territorial waters of Russia off the coast of Crimea. At the same time, the actions of the British Navy ship were provided by the American strategic reconnaissance aircraft RC-135.
As Fomin pointed out, the intensity of such flights in the Black Sea region increased by more than 60 percent compared to 2020, the number of sorties increased from 436 to 710. Strategic bombers B-IB and B-52H of the US Air Force flew 92 times against 78 in 2020 in the airspace of the Black Sea region with access to the conditional line of using weapons. To the west of Crimea, the planes flew up to the Russian borders at a distance of 15 kilometers.
“In total, this year, the command of the NATO Joint Armed Forces conducted 15 exercises in the Black Sea. In 2020, there were eight,” the Deputy Defense Minister continued.
The presence of ships and auxiliary vessels from non-regional NATO states “has become virtually permanent.”
“From January to December of this year, 30 calls of NATO ships were made, in 2020 there were 23 of them. The total duration of stay was more than 400 days, in 2020 – 359,” Fomin said.
Activity in the Baltic region
In the Baltic zone, aircraft of NATO countries made more than 1,200 sorties, and more than 50 warships went out for naval reconnaissance. More than 20 exercises were held in the region in 2021.
“At the same time, neutral states and our closest neighbors: Finland and Sweden are actively involved in coalition activities ,” the colonel-general noted.
He also stressed that after the US withdrew from the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles, NATO actually ignored Vladimir Putin ‘s initiative to impose a moratorium on the deployment of new intermediate and shorter-range missiles in Europe and the possibility of developing reciprocal measures to remove existing fears.
“Every year, the NATO bloc conducts 30 major exercises, during which scenarios for conducting military operations against Russia are being worked out. Within the framework of combat training events, special attention is paid to the creation of strike groups near the borders of our country. In particular, a series of Defender exercises were held in May-June of this year. Europe-2021 with the transfer from the United States of America and Western Europe to the “eastern flank” of reinforcement troops of up to 40 thousand people,” Fomin said.”
***
At the same time, a contingent of about 13 thousand troops from the non-regional states of the bloc is constantly present in Eastern Europe. It has about 200 tanks, 400 armored vehicles, 50 guns and three dozen aircraft and helicopters.
Moscow has expressed concerns about the concentration of Western alliance missile systems, troops, warships and aircraft near Russia’s borders, and NATO’s decades’ long eastward expansion. This month, the Russian Foreign Ministry formally signalled that it considers Ukraine to be a ‘red line’ for Moscow which NATO is strongly advised not to cross.
NATO is preparing for a large-scale armed conflict with Russia, in contravention of the Rome Declaration of 2002, Russian Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Fomin has said.
***
From Drang nach Osten “Push Eastwards”
[Russia’s] deputy defence minister warned that NATO’s efforts to expand and strengthen its military infrastructure on its eastern flank have had a negative impact on the security architecture of the entire European continent, but are only one of multiple actions taken by the alliance over the decades to do so.
“In 1999, a military operation which was not approved by the United Nations was carried out in Yugoslavia. The bombing of Belgrade killed innocent civilians, and the country’s economy was disrupted. The disintegration of Yugoslavia led to a new round expansion of the bloc and the incorporation of Albania, Croatia and Montenegro, and after that Northern Macedonia,” Fomin said.
At the same time, he noted, the ‘Western partners’ continued to assure Moscow “of the absence of aggressive designs against Russia,” and that Russia believed these assurances, notwithstanding the freezing of interaction with NATO in 1999 in connection with the Yugoslav crisis.
Fomin recalled that the most significant expansion of NATO eastward took place in 2004, when the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, as well as Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia joined the bloc.
This and other waves of expansion significantly increasing the alliance’s military potential on its eastern flank, he said, pointing out that NATO’s borders have moved over 1,000 km eastward, providing it with opportunities to use non-strategic weapons to strike targets inside Russia.
“For example, the minimum flight time from air bases in Estonia to St. Petersburg has been reduced to several minutes. Most of Kaliningrad region is within striking range of artillery systems alone….A significant number of pieces of infrastructure have been transferred to NATO’s disposal, expanding the possibility for the deployment and transfer of troops,” Fomin said.
The reference to Lakenheath is outdated.
.
The officer added that the bloc’s arsenal was beefed up considerably by weapons, vehicles and personnel of the former Warsaw Pact members, plus new ports in the Baltic and Black Seas, and an expansion of NATO’s naval forces.
NATO has focused on the military deterrence of Russia while it used to prefer engaging in joint projects, said Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin.
“The current deplorable state of relations between Russia and NATO can be explained by the fact that the alliance has often resorted to using hybrid methods to contain Russia, combining dialogue with a build-up of military preparations,” Fomin said on Monday….
He said that the deterioration of relations between Russia and NATO began earlier than 2014.
“After the end of the Cold War, the Russian Federation has repeatedly made attempts to find new forms of engagement with NATO, to create a stable, equal system of European security for all,” Fomin said. “It would be wrong to believe that the deterioration of Russia-NATO relations began in 2014.”
“The declared goals of equal cooperation by the alliance were not fulfilled much earlier, in fact, immediately after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact,” he went on to say. “At the same time, Russia was then unprecedentedly open to constructive partnership with the West and carried out a voluntary demilitarization of the country on its western borders.”
Russia also withdrew its troops from the Warsaw Pact countries, the deputy minister said.
The CIA falsely believed it was ‘invincible’ in China — here’s how its spies were reportedly discovered and killed in one of the biggest blows to the agency
A new Foreign Policy report cites sources detailing how the communication system between the CIA’s spies and handlers in China nearly a decade ago was compromised.
The vulnerability contributed to the deaths of at least 30 spies, the sources said.
This internet-based system, imported from operations in the Middle East, was apparently brought to China under the assumption that it could not be breached.
But, according to the report, the program actually had telltale links to the CIA that would have allowed China to work out what was going on.
A firewall used by the CIA to communicate with its spies in China compromised their identities and contributed to their executions by the Chinese government, several current and former intelligence officials told Foreign Policy magazine in a report published Wednesday.
In a two-year period starting in 2010, Chinese officials began accurately identifying spies working for the US.
Chinese authorities rounded up the suspects and executed or imprisoned them before their handlers were able to determine what was going on.
“You could tell the Chinese weren’t guessing,” one of the US officials said in the report. “The Ministry of State Security were always pulling in the right people.”
“When things started going bad, they went bad fast.”
US intelligence officials cited in the report are now placing the lion’s share of the blame on what one official called a “f—– up” communications system used between spies and their handlers.
This internet-based system, brought over from operations in the Middle East, was taken to China under the assumption that it could not be breached and made the CIA “invincible,” Foreign Policy reported.
“It migrated to countries with sophisticated counterintelligence operations, like China,” an official said.
“The attitude was that we’ve got this, we’re untouchable.”
Intelligence officers and their sources were able to communicate with each other using ordinary laptops or desktop computers connected to the internet, marking a stark departure from some of the more traditional methods of covert communication.
This “throwaway” encrypted program, which was assumed to be untraceable and separate from the CIA’s main communication line, was reportedly used for new spies as a safety measure in case they double-crossed the agency.
Unbeknownst to the CIA, however, this system could be used to connect with mainstream CIA communications, used by fully vetted CIA sources.
According to the report, the vulnerability would have even allowed Chinese intelligence agencies to deduce it was being used by the US government.
The Chinese set up a task force to break in to the throwaway system, Foreign Policy said, but it was unclear how they ultimately identified people.
The consequences for this breach were grim.
About 30 spies were reportedly executed, though some intelligence officials told Foreign Policy that 30 was a low estimate.
The US officials were reportedly “shell-shocked” by the speed and accuracy of Chinese counterintelligence, and rescue operations were organized to evacuate their sources.
The last CIA case officer to meet with sources in China reportedly handed over large amounts of cash in hopes that it would help them escape, Foreign Policy said.
The CIA has since been rebuilding its network in China, but the process has been an expensive and long endeavor, according to The New York Times, which in 2017 first reported on the suspected vulnerability and sources’ deaths.
END OF PART 1
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
The US summarised:
ISS crews train in the US and Russia to understand the US and Russian parts of the station, if only for emergency evacuation procedures. The US has just cancelled the visa of a Russian cosmonaut due to visit the US for his USS-ISS training sessions.
How totally pathetic and spiteful.